OnePlus unveiled its much-expected latest OnePlus 8T phone in India yesterday, and at the launch event, it said it was aiming to strengthen its manufacturing in India and will make OnePlus smart TVs locally by 2021.
Further, the company, in a bid to enhance its retail presence in the country, has decided to earmark Rs 100 crore to set up offline retail network. The Chinese phone-maker said it was hoping to make inroads in tier II cities and rural pockets of the country.
OnePlus will launch 14 new stores in the next six months.
It will also help expand the company’s service centre network from 65 cities to 100 cities in the next one year.
Good demand for OnePlus smart TV, too
Speaking at the sidelines of the launch event to the news agency PTI, OnePlus India Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer Navnit Nakra said, "we will get into aggressive retail expansion. We will be investing nearly Rs 100 crore towards deeper market penetration by taking our premium offline experience, which is right now mostly in metro cities and going beyond the metros and expanding to new online and offline retail partnerships.”
He further said that the company was planning to take its premium and the mid-premium smartphones to more markets in India than ever before. "We are seeing a phenomenal amount of demand coming from outside the top four metros and top 10 cities."
Nakra added that the demand was not only happening for the premium but also the mid-premium phones. OnePlus smart TVs have also seen good demand.
OnePlus is present in about 5,000 points of sale (PoS) already, and the Rs 100 crore investment will help expand this to about 8,000 PoS.
"At present, we have 30-plus OnePlus Experience Stores and this is a number that we’ll look at taking to 40-45 in the next six months. A majority of our retail stores are in partnerships with larger institutions like Reliance Digital, Poorvika, Sangeetha, Croma, Vijay Sales, Bajaj Electronics as well as large and mid-sized modern trade and general trade partners,” he was quoted as saying.
All OnePlus phones, TV manufactured in India
OnePlus, he said, was planning price segment diversification and product diversification. OnePlus is expected to look at mid-segment phones more seriously in the coming months.
All of OnePlus smartphones are manufactured in India and by 2021, all OnePlus TVs will also be manufactured locally
The open sale of OnePlus 8T 5G will begin on October 17. It will be available in two variants of 12GB RAM/256GB memory and 8GB RAM/128GB memory.
In India, the OnePlus 8T will be available in two configurations. The base variant with 128GB of storage and 8GB of RAM is priced at Rs 42,999 and will be available in Aquamarine Green and Lunar Silver colours. The top variant with 12GB of RAM and 256GB storage is priced at Rs 45,999 and will only be available in the Aquamarine Green colourway.
The device features 120Hz 6.55-inch AMOLED display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset, an upgraded 65W fast-charging technology and 4,500 mAh battery.
