Vikas Agarwal, Oneplus India Shares The Secret Of Attracting Millions Of Loyal Customers

OnePlus has been launching its flagship smartphones after every six months. The smartphone maker launched OnePlus 3T in November 2016, OnePlus 5 in May 2017 and recently the OnePlus 5T in November 2017.

Launched earlier in November, the flagship device OnePlus 5T is now available for buyers in India through Amazon and OnePlus online store. Earlier, OnePlus 5T was available through 'Early Access Sale' that was held two times in the month of November.

The company only launches products in the premium smartphone category and according to various reports, OnePlus 5 was the top-selling smartphone (above $400) in India with almost 25 per cent market share during Q3 2017.

Now the question arises why OnePlus' customer’s base is increasing rapidly.

Well looking at the product portfolio of the company, they always keep on improving their products by upgrading the new edition of OnePlus’ smartphone with the latest hardware whether it is the chipset, display or the camera and improved software.

In an exclusive interaction with BW Businessworld, Vikas Agarwal, General Manager, OnePlus India, shared the secret of attracting millions of loyal customers and the ways of innovating smartphones. We operate in the premium segment where the target is young Android users, millennials and gamers.

“We have the market share in the premium segment of around 30 per cent which is close to that of Apple and OnePlus is currently operational in 33 markets,” said Agarwal.

Agarwal also mentioned that all OnePlus devices sold in India are manufactured locally at Noida. Earlier all smartphones were imported in the country, which sometimes created supply-demand mismatch and the products used to go out of stock.

Vikas Agarwal also said that the company will be launching their new flagship smartphone OnePlus 6 next year. When asked why the company skipped OnePlus 4, he answered “The number four is not considered to be good in China so that’s the only reason OnePlus 5 came out after OnePlus 3T.”

The major improvements in the OnePlus 5T over its predecessor are - high-resolution 18:9 display, low-light camera performance, and some tweaks in OxygenOS software.

Overall OnePlus 5T is a great phone given its features at this price range. Most of the OnePlus 5 users might skip the OnePlus 5T and rather wait for OnePlus 6 instead because everything is pretty much the same other than the display and location of fingerprint sensor; the new 20-megapixel sensor is just something for which you won't switch a 6-month-old phone.