This past week, I had the chance for a quick Q&A session with OnePlus North America CEO Robin Liu and find out more about the strategy of this popular overseas brand that’s making headway in the United States.
When I mention OnePlus to friends, most have never heard of it. What’s your plan to have the brand dive deeper into the U.S. market?
Our brand awareness is picking up. We’re focusing on our products. Everybody who knows the brand or our products, their experiences are pretty good – so they stay together with the brand for a long time. Our mission is to focus on the products, and make the best experience for customers. We are also targeting a different audience — spreading our brand awareness to more users. It will take some time because it costs a lot (of money and effort). We’re also working together with our retail partners to expand our products to a larger audience.
OnePlus announced it’s coming out with foldable devices later this summer. Why do you feel that’s the future of mobile? In your research, what do consumers want with regards to those?
The foldable phone definitely is a new form factor for the premium smartphone market. Samsung has geared up very good earnings on foldable phones in the past four years. We want to bring the best technology to the user experience with the smartphone, and improve their lives. For example, we offer the fastest charging in the U.S. market that makes people’s daily lives easier. The foldable phone has a tablet-size screen on the internal side, and that’s closer to having a PC fit in our pockets. Based on this, people can experience more with foldable phones. According to data, foldable phone shipments increased a lot the past three years, and was expected to reach 55 million units from 2022 to 2025. And it’s really a next-generation form factor. So this is also why we want to bring the leading technology in the new form factor to the US market.
How do you convert consumers over to using OnePlus phones from either other Android brands or from Apple?
We want to listen to the community and also we want to build up with the best experience for our customers. So this is what we are doing now with our Oxygen OS and also with our community. I think this is the best advantage OnePlus has now. We also need to build our ecosystem – that can make people’s product experiences more convenient and also can create a seamless connectivity. This can help us to build up our community and also convert some people over to become our customers. And the foldable is a new form factor that iPhone hasn’t done yet. It’s really an innovation in the industry that can bring some different experiences compared with the candy bar-style phones, and that can help us to convert some other users.
These folding phones are pretty pricey, so far.
The foldable phone pricing is pretty high because of the cost of the components. So at least at the current stage, it’s not easy to have a (low) price even for us or for some other brands. But I think it will bring more customers, which will (eventually) make it more affordable.