Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus will launch their new flagship smartphone OnePlus 3 on June 15. The company sold 1,000 OnePlus 3 smartphones in a second-long blind sale on Monday.
“Thank you for your trust. OnePlus 3 will go on sale in sufficient supply on June 16,” the founder and CEO of OnePlus Pete Lau said on Weibo on Monday, in response to a netizen who had complained about failing to snap up a OnePlus 3 in the initial sale.
This in some way has reflected Chinese consumers’ thirst for a flagship smartphone with the Snapdragon 820 processor. Chinese smartphone makers including Xiaomi, LeEco and vivo have launched such smartphones in the first half of 2016, but it is still hard to actually get one. Such smartphones are jokingly called PPT smartphones, because they can only be seen in the PPT of the launch party.
Rumor has it that OnePlus 3 will also have a Snapdragon 820 processor, 4GB or 6GB RAM and 64 GB or 128GB ROM. Rumour also has it that the launch of the OnePlus 3 will see one million units released for sale globally. If this is true, OnePlus 3 seems to be a good choice. Its blind sale price at the official website OnePlus.cn was RMB 2,999 (USD 456); any excess payments will be refunded to buyers, and malfunctioning phones will be replaced.
OnePlus was founded in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen in December, 2013. The company puts much attention on overseas markets. According to NetEase last Wednesday, OnePlus has sold overall two million OnePlus One smartphones, among which 1.5 million were sold to overseas markets.
However, some media reported that OnePlus’s smartphone shipments in the first three quarters of 2015 was less than one million, far less than their initial goal of three to five million.
China’s leading smartphone maker Xiaomi has been known for its scarcity-based strategy, or “hunger marketing”. According to a January report by American research firm IDC, Xiaomi made 70.8 million shipments in 2015, ranking as No.3 smartphone vendor in China, after Huawei and Lenovo.
(Top photo of OnPlus2is screenshot from oneplus.cn)
