New Delhi: OnePlus Founder and CEO Pete Lau has said that India has become the benchmark for creating successful global products for the company.
Writing for the company's forum late on Tuesday, Lau said, "I am humbled to hear that OnePlus has emerged as the best-selling premium smartphone in India in just three years in the market. Three years later, India is our benchmark for creating successful global products,"
The Chinese smartphone company emerged as the leader with 40 per cent market share in the premium segment in India in the second quarter of 2018, said a report from Hong Kong-based Counterpoint Research on Tuesday.
Last year, for the first time, the company hit the $1 billion revenue mark and this year, with the OnePlus 6, it managed to sell one million units in 22 days.
In terms of best-selling models, OnePlus 6 was the best in the premium segment followed by Samsung S9 Plus and OnePlus 5T.
Here is the full text of Pete Lau post
Hi everyone,
I am humbled to hear that OnePlus has emerged as the best-selling premium smartphone in India in just three years in the market. As thrilled as I am by this early validation, it has also led me to reflect on some of our memorable experiences in India.
Incredible Journey
Looking back at our journey, I find it almost unbelievable that, when we launched OnePlus in 2013, we didn’t launch in India at first. Despite not being officially present in India, we already had people purchasing the product from European and North American markets to take back home. Realizing that the Indian community loved the product, we decided then to listen to their voice and take a leap of faith with this market. Even then, we planned to send around 5,000 units to India to control risk, as we were still skeptical about how the market would react. However, when we finally launched in India, we were pleasantly surprised to see that over 2 lakh people had signed up for the invitation.
As humans, we are quick to judge, but you cannot do that with a country like India. India is today a community that is our eye to the globe, a soundboard for experimentation through which we understand the pulse of the customer at a global level.
Three years later, India is our benchmark for creating successful global products. This young market is now set to become our second home ground, a center for product innovation. Our new R&D center in India is just the beginning.
In the five years since we started the company, we have steadily grown to become a global presence across 35 countries and we have our millions of users to thank for it. Last year, for the first time, we hit the $1 billion revenue mark and this year, with the OnePlus 6, it managed to sell 1 million units in 22 days. India, as a market has emerged as a frontrunner in what has been an incredible journey, making for almost 1/3rd of the company’s revenue in 2017.
Pillars of strength
This success we can with certainty attribute to the thousands of tech enthusiasts, fans and community members who have been our team’s support system from the very beginning, working with us to create the most perfect version of our product. Our community, in that sense, has been our biggest critics but also our biggest advocates.
As an individual, I am a strong advocate for nurturing the roots of long-term investments so that one may reap the benefits for years to come. Every decision made for the company has been based on this principle, allowing us to develop some truly valuable business partnerships over the years.
In India, we must acknowledge the contributions of several such long-standing partners who believed in our vision and understood our focus of being a customer-centric company even when we were a new entrant in the market. We truly value the role some of these partners like Amazon, Qualcomm and Croma have played over the last four years. We hope to continue to nurture these relationships in the years to come.
The Road Ahead
We are at the beginning of a long journey towards realizing our vision to create a healthy company that endures. In my opinion, if a brand survives a hundred years, then it would have inevitably changed the world while also having survived waves of evolution. As we continue in our strive to become a company that survives for over a century, these past few years are merely a speck in the larger scheme of things.
Looking back, staying focused is one of my most important takeaways. Staying focused on the cause and ideals we firmly believe in, and sticking to our own sense of rhythm and internal certainty, in the face of external pressures and temptations, is key. The reason that we have survived in this highly competitive atmosphere is inseparable from our focus on product - on building one flagship at a time.
There are two kinds of ideals in this world. The first is a personal ideal which is driven by the need for self-actualization. The second is an ideal, belief and value shared by a team; that becomes a reality through the efforts of the collective. Most people strive to achieve that first ideal throughout their lives, which is commendable. However, I hope that OnePlus can also be in a place to accomplish the second.
Thank you India!
Never Settle.
