Oneplus Success Story: How Pete Lau and Carl Pei Created a Multi-million Dollar Mobile Company

The year 2015 witnessed a massive shift in the smartphone market. The prolong dominated company Apple and Samsung was broken in many markets across the world by just one brand which was making its debut in the smartphone industries, well from the day of its launch expensive flagship smartphones giants are under increase threat from a new breed of smartphone which are addressed as Flagship Killers well the brand was expand this mobile world revolution and which is at the centre of this stage is none other than One plus.

A Chinese smartphone start-up founded in 2013, the brains behind this are Pete Lau and Carl Pei. Pete is currently the CEO of One plus, the Chinese entrepreneur began his career as a hardware engineer for Oppo Electronics, thou he started as a hardware engineer he went on to become the director of Oppo's blue raven and headed the marketing team as well later he also become the vice president of the company, he played a huge role in bringing the Cyanogen Mod in the android operating system on Oppo N1 smartphone, but both Pete and Carl always dreamed big. They believed that there are so many inefficiencies in the mobile phone industry and one such inefficiency was the higher prices of the premium smartphones, well both were extremely determined to start their own venture an eventually Pete quit his company in 2013 and thus both Pete and Carl began their entrepreneurial journey in the late 2013.

At that time Oneplus only had 5 employees, well like most startup incubate in a cafe this bunch of people were sitting in a cafe talking about smartphones and their experiences, however thou they were working on android most of them were using an IPhone. When they started discussing as to why they didn't opt for an android phone the reasons were many, some of them included bad built quality, software not intuitive, and lot of bloat ware which comes along. That's when they saw an opportunity to make a device with good built quality, attention to detail and a beautiful design which was missing in the market, price was never a focus then. They just wanted to built a great android device which they themselves would use rather than any other device, they soon announce their company and the work one there first project and that was the time when OnePlus One was born.

Well following the motive of making a affordable flagship killer, the team was ready to launch OnePlus one but they never wanted to launch it in a traditional way which is of selling their devices in the retail stores. Instead they opted for a different approach of invite only system, generally exclusive invites are reserved for high price members of clubs and secret society, but oneplus wanted to take this route and went ahead with their invite only model.

Industry experts believed that this model is going to backfire big time and wanted the founders of Oneplus to change the strategy, but in-spite of that Oneplus proved everyone wrong as it created a huge amount of interest in their smartphone which was described as the "Flagship Killer". Oneplus One was a big hit in the market and it later went on to become one of the most talked about smartphones of 2014. By the end of 2014, Oneplus sold 1.5 Million smartphones globally in its 1st year of trading. It greatly exceeded the expectations of Carl and Pete and the fellow Chinese workers with who he founded the business. What’s commendable is the fact that all of this was achieved with any advertisement budget, mainstream marketing, apart from talking on social media circles and flash sales online.

Well India is one of the biggest market for Oneplus and Oneplus one did really well in the country, however just like any other business success is always coupled with some tensions and Oneplus was no exception. The Delhi High Court banned the sales of Oneplus due to losses of Micromax, which is another phone manufacturing company based in India. Micromax said that it had the exclusive rights to ship phones with cyanogen mod software in India, Oneplus argued that this exclusivity was only for Indian competitors and not for phone manufacturers outside India. Later the ban was lifted in December 21st 2014 and Oneplus had to build its own custom Rom called Oxygen OS for its future devices.

After its marvelous success with Oneplus One, Oneplus made its products available in Southeast Asia for the first time partnering with Lazada Indonesia on 23 January 2015. A few months later, the company launched Oneplus 2 the successor to the highly successful Oneplus one. It was unveiled on July 2015 and was highly promoted as 2016 flagship killer, there were really high expectations from the second generation Oneplus Phone mainly because the company managed to create a big amount of hive for it, slowly Oneplus started expanding their market significantly world wide as the sales of there smartphones grow exponentially. In-fact after the launch on Oneplus 3 they received an on slot of orders for which they even had to stop there sales before they could made demand and similar was the reception to Oneplus 3T as well.

The smartphone totally changed the phase of an android device by offering all the premium specifications at an affordable price, but how did a company which did not even exist a few years back created a brand which would outshine the most popular brands available in the market like LG and Samsung, the answer to that question is there strong vision and their plans the moto of Oneplus is to make great product and sell the phone directly to consumers skipping the middlemen. The company follows word of mouth policy and they believe in providing high values to the costumers, so that they promote their product to their friends, family and Know people. Their business model clearly shows that best quality materials and latest hardware is used in all of their devices, all the components are collected and tested at their factories in the best conditions. Oneplus surely proved one point that there is no reason that a smartphone should be priced so high, a brand new Iphone 7 is priced at Rs 49,000 while galaxy S8 is priced at Rs 55,000 no doubt both are amazing phones but it is quite evident that the additional price you are paying is only for the brand name.

Despite witnessing huge success so far the founders of Oneplus believed that they are not even a success yet, they believed that the smartphone industry is constantly changing and users understand what they are getting, however it’s a sure fact the Oneplus will ripple the smartphone industry ultimately in a way.