OnePlus has had a lot of criticism in the past year. After they announced the OnePlus One, and it became very popular, many were excited for the device. But as a brand new company, OnePlus couldn’t just go out and have a million of their OnePlus One smartphones manufactured. As that takes money they didn’t have. Additionally, if they ordered too much, that could be the death of their company. Something they definitely did not want. So they made the invite system, while many of us hated it, and probably still do. It was great for OnePlus because it allowed them to control their inventory, and not have too many smartphones in their inventory at one time. It also helped keep the hype going about the device, which is arguably the most important part about this.
For a while, OnePlus was not stating how many devices they had sold, and many of us were just guessing at the number. However, Carl Pei recently was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, and stated that they did sell 1.5 million units in the first year, with the OnePlus One. That’s an amazing feat for any smartphone manufacturer. Let alone one that did that in its first year.
With the OnePlus Two on the horizon, one has to wonder how many devices they’ll be selling this year. Especially since they are rumored to be selling two devices, and the OnePlus Two is going to be a bit pricier than the original was. The company has stated that it will be under $450, and sport a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor, a USB Type-C port as well as a fingerprint sensor. Which is why it now has a physical home button.
Arguably one of the biggest reasons that the OnePlus One sold so well was because it was developed with Cyanogen, who built Cyanogen OS for the OnePlus One. It was Cyanogen’s first smartphone as well as OnePlus. With the number of fans that Cyanogen had, one has to wonder if the bigger deal was Cyanogen’s software or OnePlus’ hardware. OnePlus has since developed their own ROM and hired a number of guys that built Paranoid Android and that will be present on the OnePlus Two when it’s announced next week.