New OnePlus phone confirmed for end of 2015

4 Aug 2015

Just a few weeks after the launch of the OnePlus 2, the Chinese manufacturer has said there will be yet another new OnePlus phone confirmed before 2015 is finished.

The news that a new OnePlus phone was already in the works just after the launch of the OnePlus 2 came in an interview with the company’s 25-year-old co-founder Carl Pei when he was discussing the company’s future plans.

Discussing what is in store over the next five years with USA Today, Pei has rather high ambitions, saying that by the turn of the decade there will only be three mobile manufacturers – Apple, Samsung and OnePlus – because “everyone else would’ve died because they couldn’t reach the scale they wanted fast enough or they couldn’t have a margin to sustain their business”.

However, speaking of OnePlus’ immediate plans, Pei confirmed that there was already a follow-up device to be announced before the end of the year, but did not state whether it would be a direct successor to the OnePlus 2 or something closer to entry level.

“I saw the prototype for that phone I was like ‘holy s*** that’s going to be my daily driver’ but then when the OnePlus 2 production version came out it’s also super nice, so its really hard to decide now what to use,” Pei said.

So far, the reception of the OnePlus 2 has been quite warm, but some OnePlus fans keen to get their hands on the phone have been left frustrated by the invite-only model that has been in place since the launch of the OnePlus One.

This, Pei has admitted, teeters a fine balance between profitability and growth: “This model has actually slowed our growth a little bit to be honest because some people were pissed off that they couldn’t get an invite fast enough.

“But in the end our finances are much more healthy than a lot of these Silicon Valley companies that are burning a bunch of other people’s money and burning venture capital for growth.”

OnePlus box image via Nadir Hashmi/Flickr

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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