OnePlus, the newcomer Chinese brand in the smartphone segment, became quite popular with tech enthusiasts within a couple of years. Due to the high-end specifications of its smartphones that are offered at half the price of comparable products from well-established brands, OnePlus One and the OnePlus 2 became hugely popular in India. The company launched in the country late last year and targeted to sell a million devices in 2015. However, it looks like the company might narrowly miss the self-imposed sales target.
The biggest reason to miss the sales target is being attributed to supply chain issues, something OnePlus has faces right from the start. Vikas Agarwal, General Manager of OnePlus India, shared this information with Reuters. He said "In the initial two months, we weren't able to get stock, due to which we lost almost 6-8 weeks of sales." To smoothen the process of manufacturing more units to meet the demand and to cut manufacturing costs, OnePlus entered into an agreement with Foxconn to manufacture its smartphones in India.
OnePlus planned to sell Made-In-India phones (under the Make In India campaign) in the country starting the end of 2015, but due to delays in receiving required certifications, the plan has been pushed back slightly to mid or late January 2016. These devices will be manufactured at the Foxconn facility in SriCity, which is an SEZ (special economic zone) near Chennai. Manufacturing devices in India will help OnePlus in avoiding the import tax, resulting in lowered cost of the device. Foxconn agreed to manufacture around 500,000 OnePlus phones per month.
