Who would have thought even two years ago that the key scrap in 2020 smartphone sales would not be bells-and-whistles laden flagship handsets, but the unglamorous market of mid-tier mobiles? But that’s exactly where we’re at right now. Why? Mid-tier is where the money is. People are fed up with incremental gains on devices that cost north of a grand as last year’s best tech adorns the latest phones that cost less that half the cash.
Founded less than seven years ago by Carl Pei and Pete Lau, OnePlus is now third behind Apple and Samsung for premium phone sales according to Counterpoint Research. Earlier this year the arrival of the £900 OnePlus 8 Pro seemingly confirmed that OnePlus had moved away from producing budget flagship phones. WIRED US put it bluntly: “OnePlus called itself the ‘flagship killer’. Now it's merely another flagship phone.”
Now OnePlus is back with a second stab at a mid-tier mobile, after the first attempt, 2015’s OnePlus X, did not fare well and sold poorly. People may be more than receptive to mid-tier handsets now, but this time around OnePlus has stiff competition in the form of the iPhone SE, Oppo’s Realme X50 5G, the Moto G 5G Plus and the upcoming Pixel 4a to name just the obvious contenders. As a result, Pei is relying heavily on the OnePlus brand to make its £379 OnePlus Nord stand out.
WIRED sat down with Pei, socially distanced by a couple of continents, to talk about the new phone, the new(ish) strategy and OnePlus’s attempt to woo a new type of customer. But we start with an admission from Pei: “Personally, I am bored of phone launches. Like, I can understand sitting through the launch of the original iPhone, because it was literally changing the world, and everything showcased was new. But sitting through one hour of frivolous announcements? I stopped watching smartphone launches a couple of years ago.”
This may explain the AR launch for the Nord yesterday, complete with exploded views, which is a departure from the traditional stage affair. The company sold 45,000 pieces of paper that people could hold in their hands during the launch event that would “become the phone”. That's right. OnePlus managed to sell thousands of pieces of paper.
Line ID @ufa98v2