Ever since the Chinese upstart hit the scene with the teasing and constant drip, drip of details surrounding the One, OnePlus has become something of a big deal in the Android community. Offering up a great device without the associated price tag, OnePlus has become a firm that divides both their users and otherwise into either lovers or haters like few other companies have achieved in the past. A lot of this has to do with how they carry themselves and release small pieces of information one after another, rather than just “coming out with it” but without a doubt, the invite system has attracted more criticism than anything else. Their flagship, the OnePlus 2 is now available without the need for an invite, finally!
As Carl Pei writes on the official OnePlus Form their invite system was “crucial to letting us scale our operations and has given our fans a unique way to share OnePlus with the people in their lives”. We’re not so sure about the sharing with other people thing, but from a business standpoint, the invite system does make sense. If you hit the market with a new device and lots of stock piled up in warehouses, it can be hard to turn a profit, because you have money tied up in stock just lying around. The invite system allows OnePlus to gauge how many devices they’re likely to sell, thus informing them how many devices they need to make ahead of time. This keeps the overall cost down, because if you know you’re going to make a profit on something every single time, you can charge less as there’s no need to recoup losses in dead stock.
Whether or not OnePlus has found a way of speeding up production to ensure they don’t have any stock lying around, or they’re just confident in how well the OnePlus 2 is doing is unclear, but the OnePlus 2 is now invite-free forever. The company is also running some Holiday deals from December 5th to December 7th as well, including 50% off StyleSwap covers, 90% off selected OnePlus One accessories and every other accessory 10% off. For those looking at the OnePlus X, it’ll be available invite-free during the same period as well.