One Plus One / OPPO Business Strategy & Facts / Why You Should Buy One

OnePlus One is a Smart Phone from OnePlus which was announced in the month of April 2014 at Beijing. It has received a huge buzz from the whole tech industry and is reaching great heights considering the campaigns they are running. There have been many rumors that the brand is actually part of the Chinese Brand OPPO and instead of limiting themselves to just China, they came out with OnePlus brand to cater the world wide market and the hopes for this happening are pretty good. The product is not yet ready and made available to everyone because its a start up and following is the production schedule.

• Early May : 100 Winners from ‘Smash the Past’ Campaign
• June : Phone available to selected users who have received an Invite.

OnePlus Child of OPPO

One Plus One [OPO] does sound similar to the brand name OPPO right? Well we have many reasons to believe that this is certainly not just a coincidence but a few facts which can prove this.

• First off we would recommend you to check out the documents which were filed with the Shenzhen Municipal Market Supervisory Authority in China which mentioned that the company OnePlus was funded 100% by Oppo.
• The domain name ONEPLUS.NET is register by zhou jin who has a email added zhoujin1689@oppo.com and this clearly shows that the domain registrant is also linked to Oppo. The Organization details are also linked to Oppo – Org.: GUANGDONG OPPO MOBILE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CORP.,LTD

Its pretty much clear that Peter Lau was not able to either get approvals on the kind of products and pricing he wanted or wanted to do this separately and hence he had opted to move away from Oppo which he had opted through a Google Plus Post. Following this within a few months we have the One Plus One Smart Phone which is not just called as a revolutionary device but also a Nexus Killer, but wait aren’t those some quick assumptions made by a few blogs which have received this device? The Smart Phone is not yet available to everyone, the team is promoting some unethical campaigns and has offered some useless giveaway’s. Lets talk on this.

Poking Others

The first thing OnePlus Team did wrong was to make a joke of the Samsung Galaxy S5 by publishing the following Image. It was promoted with the hashtag #NeverSettle which showed a bandage clearly targeting the Galaxy S5 because of the back panel which resembles a bandage, but considering that One Plus is expecting to become a International Brand, it should not opt for making a joke of their competitor. Its clear that they were becoming Over-Confident for their product which is not yet available in the market nor would be for the next few weeks unlike the S5 which Samsung has already sold millions of units within a month of launch.

This clearly is a strategy which Nokia used to opt through their Social Media Channels and make jokes on their competitors products but we can say that’s fair because they are all Tier 1 brands which are in a healthy competition from years and they don’t poke others without any reason.

OPPO Find 7a = OnePlus One

Its clear that these cheap marketing stunts are opted by Oppo to launch their Smart Phone with two different pricing options and essentially launch it twice in the market getting it double the publicity. Now if you are confused then you can clearly check out the OnePlus One kept next to the Oppo Find 7a and comment back to us with all the differences you find around both of these considering that they both are running on Cyanogenmod.

The OnePlus One is running on Android 4.4, CyanogenMod 11S which the Find 7A is also expected to run on while both the devices have the same 5.5″ Full HD Display and offer the same internal storage. There are a few small differences in terms of the RAM, Battery and weight, with a huge difference in terms of price which is the main factor because of the which there has been huge buzz for the OnePlus One. Overall this clearly hints that the Find 7A is a phone which has been rebranded and sold off.

Marketing Stunt

The company has not made the device available to everyone right from the day they officially announced, but instead went ahead with a marketing stunt which is clearly something wrong. The idea was to send the Smart Phone to a hundred users at $1 in exchange of them actually Smashing their Smart Phone with the campaign being “Smart The Past”. It has received huge interest all over the world, while few people already started smashing their devices and started uploading the videos and were later alerted to only do this when they are selected. This was a publicity stunt to giveaway a hundred units in exchange of the huge buzz and converting the consumers into their followers. The brand received a total of 140000 applications for this campaign and a selected 100 winners would receive a 16GB Silk White OnePlus One + 3 invites to purchase the OnePlus One.

Invitation / Referral System

From Day #1 OnePlus has been focusing more on promoting the Invitation system because that’s the only way they could get the maximum buzz and keep their fans more active on their Social Media Accounts and their forums. The brand has a dedicated Forum where users can comment anything around the products and they are the ones who have the highest chances of getting the phone first before others. The Invite system would be available to a limited users who can buy the phone and refer 3 of their friends to buy the phone who have to purchase it within 24 hours of receiving the invitation. This clearly looks like a Chain System which does work if the product is priced right and comes with the right features.

OnePlus Business Strategy

Why does one start a business? Its obvious that they do it for making money and in case of OnePlus they have a different strategy since they are not backed with some VC’s who are pouring in millions of dollars. According to the Carl who is a admin of the OnePlus Forum, they have a interesting business strategy and the first step is to Impress the whole industry and cater to a limited number of users who would help them gain more word of mouth publicity along with the Invitation & Referral systems in place. The brand has quickly gained a lot of interest considering the best hardware specifications, aggressive pricing and the campaigns mentioned above which can be clearly seen according to the stats below.

The plan to cut down the marketing spends by running contests and schemes which can help the brand gain a lot of awareness and this does work considering that this is a new brand and people would be conscious to know more about the same. Its hard to work on the same principle when you are already having a bunch of products in your portfolio and you are competing head to head with other brands. Along with this OnePlus has eliminated the retail channel costs which means that they won’t have to pay any commissions or shares to the distributors, stores or retail channels which is a very good idea considering that on an average 30% of the final price is actually shared this way. Finally the brand is also planning to not make any money for the first two years and want to gain confidence from the users following which they would be earning money their software apps, selling accessories or offering similar services which is again a good opportunity.

Our Opinion about OnePlus One

Considering that the above mentioned points are slightly against the brand in terms of its connection with OPPO while clearly promoting it as a separate entity, we are still in love with the product and would totally recommend you to buy one considering the specifications & the value for money it offers you. The reason is that its placed as a copy of a product which is priced at $500 while this being available at just $300. The Team from OnePlus has officially confirmed recently that they are a separate entity even though one of their investors is OPPO Electronic and they are in talks with other investors too.

The Galaxy S5, iPhone 5S, HTC One M8, Xperia Z2 are all priced above $600 Non-Contract while the first Smart Phone from OnePlus has a retail MRP of USD 299 which is not just a low price but a perfect reason on why you should be buying it. The only hard part right now is getting a invite to purchase the phone and many users won’t worry about who the owner is, nor what the companies connections are with because they are investing primarily in a product which works great and offers a amazing experience.