OnePlus seized almost half of India’s flagship market in the fourth quarter of the last year, according to the latest Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker published by the International Data Corporation. IDC found the Chinese phone maker accounted for 48-percent of high-end smartphone shipments in the South Asian country over the observed period, having grown its business by 1,116-percent year-on-year. In that respect, OnePlus is presently the fastest-growing smartphone brand in India, though Xiaomi is still understood to be holding that title in terms the entire market in the country seeing how OnePlus only competes in the flagship segment.
OnePlus India General Manager Vikas Agarwal called the development a “truly remarkable” achievement, noting how the Shenzhen, Guangdong-based company only officially entered India three years ago. The firm largely attributed its success to its online-focused business model, though recent reports suggest it’s now also seeking to pursue offline opportunities in India, at least as far as marketing is concerned. India is widely believed to be the most competitive smartphone market on the planet by virtue of the fact it’s the last remaining bastion of growth opportunities for original equipment manufacturers, with its consumers still showing no signs of upgrade fatigue and many of them being yet to buy their first smartphone. That state of the market is a natural fit for OnePlus’s strategy of delivering aggressively priced products seeking to undercut their competitors, especially as that approach is rarely employed in the premium smartphone market, some industry watchers believe.
OnePlus as a whole continues to grow, with every one of its new smartphones breaking the sales record of its predecessor since the company’s inception in late 2013 and the release of the original OnePlus One in the spring of 2014. Last year, the company recorded approximately $1.4 billion in revenue with “healthy profits,” according to a recent statement from its founder and Chief Executive Officer Pete Lau. The OnePlus 6 is expected to be announced this spring, presumably around May, and should be available for online purchase on a global level, much like the devices that preceded it. The OnePlus 6 is expected to retain the bezel-less design of the OnePlus 5T but feature the newer Snapdragon 845 chip and additional hardware improvements.