The Brand Misconception
OnePlus and how it's changed
*This post is written targeting the average Indian consumer*
Here’s the chart ranking the most popular phone brands in India by no. of phones sold per quarter,
There is something interesting in this chart, the last 3 companies are all owned by the same parent company. Realme, Vivo, Oppo, Narzo, IQOO and Oneplus are all owned by BBK electronics. The first 4 brands are known to sell Chinese-make smartphones which are quite literally “cheap and best”. But what many don’t know is that Oneplus is also owned by BBK electronics and is trying incredibly hard to join the same “cheap and best” boat. This may sound incredibly complex and hard to understand, so let’s start with
Why is oneplus so popular?
Oneplus as we know started as a “flagship killer” phone company. The oneplus one was competing in the premium phone market while being only half the price. This made it the “cheap phone with the best features”. Only, there’s a small problem, this was true only in the U.S.
In India, the Oneplus 5T was sold for around 30,000 INR which was roughly half the price of the iPhone X (around 80,000 INR). Although the features weren’t the same as the iPhone X, the Oneplus stood a much better chance at being compared to the latest iPhone than its competitors. This is why oneplus came to be known as the “Flagship Killer”. It had more features for lesser amounts.
The problem in India was that the “(less) amount” at which the Oneplus was selling for was not less enough. 30,000 INR was still quite expensive and virtually unaffordable for the lower middle class (Oneplus’s target audience). The people who bought the Oneplus however were the upper-middle class or the rich ones who either didn’t like the iPhone, couldn’t afford it or couldn’t handle it (that’s actually true). This gave Oneplus the same respect the iPhone had been given for so many years. In India, there’s very few people who buy the iPhone for its specs, there’s a lot more who buy the iPhone as a status symbol. When the iPhone consumers switched to Oneplus, it started to become a sort of a status symbol which wasn’t in the league of the iPhone but still meant that the owner had quite a thick wallet. The oneplus phones moulded to become the “Premium Android Smartphone”.
(This is what Samsung would’ve become if they hadn’t branched out to launch around 15 phones per year all targeting different price ranges and audiences.)
So, What happened then?
Oneplus botched the transition or rather people didn’t expect the transition.
I loved Dave2D’s take on this.
There's 1 goal every company has:
-to make money.
And Oneplus is a company, so their final goal was just that, make money.
The problem is that people bought into the idea that one plus was making flagship killer phones, they were making phones for the enthusiast and all that, that the users actually ignored the fact that.. that well, one plus is just a company.
The thing one plus tried to do was get in as many users as possible to make a strong user base, to get a huge fan following, to make itself known as a popular brand. Once they’d accomplished this, all they had to was branch out and make as many phones in as many price ranges as possible. This, of course meant that people would buy the one plus phones in the price ranges that were affordable for them.
India, we must remember doesn't house a lot of tech enthusiasts, meaning that the one plus transition wasn’t very disappointing and rather came as a delight to the many Indians who could afford the one plus Nord series of phones in the 20-30k price range. These users didn’t really care about the specs in general. All they wanted was to get their hands on a Oneplus phone and if the phone had a 64 mp camera, they’d shoot the best pictures mankind has ever seen.
A comparison in popularity of Oneplus phones
This is the interest shown by the world nearing the launch of the Oneplus 5T. (It’s clear that Indians were highly interested).
And here’s the same data zoomed in so that you know which region of India was really hyped up for the 5T-
Now, here’s the interesting graphic for the launch of the most recent one plus 10 pro-
Indians are very clearly hyped for the release of the phone going back to my point. Here’s yet another zoomed in version of the graphic-
Interestingly so, the states that were earlier interested in one plus seem to have changed.
Should you buy Oneplus phones or not?
It depends on the phone. Oneplus has gone from launching one really good phone every year to launching about 5-6 phones in different price ranges.
The worst part however is the fact that these 5-6 phones are not original but rather previously launched phones in a different colour with tweaked specs and a newer much longer name. Let’s take for example the Oneplus Nord CE 2 lite 5G -
Now take a look at this Oppo F21 Pro-
After that we have the Vivo V21e-
And finally, here’s the realme 9 pro-
I just love finding these similarities. If you haven’t yet realised realme, vivo, oppo and oneplus are owned by the same parent company BBK electronics. So essentially its the same phones (don’t worry i’ve checked the specs) priced differently and also tweaked slightly. When BBK managed to make the Oneplus nord successful in India, it ensured that the recycled designs and chip sets installed on the same metal boxes were going to sell out quickly in the peninsula.
So finally should you or should you not buy oneplus phones?
Again, it depends on what you’re looking for in your phone. The reason why i’ve written this article is to tell you that Oneplus, contrary to popular belief is not a brand anymore it’s just another one of the companies like vivo, oppo and iqoo. It’s not to be compared with Samsung and Apple. Hope you realised something after reading I think the longest post on my newsletter so far. Funnily enough, I wrote this just because my aunt decided to get a oneplus phone instead of a much better Xiaomi one just because “It’s Oneplus”.
a gentle reminder to all the folks that haven’t checked out my YouTube channel to go watch a few videos at-
youtube.com/kshitijl
Cheerio.