OnePlus, which has only been in the high-end flagship market, has begun to release ODM orders, including 4G projects and 5G projects, Laoyaoba.com quoted industry insiders as saying.
Among them, 4G projects have identified suppliers, and major ODM vendors of 5G projects are still in the evaluation process, the report said.
This means that the OnePlus mobile phone product market strategy has undergone major changes. It will no longer be limited to the high-end flagship market and will gradually go down to the low-end market.
ODM stands for "original design manufacturing" and is also referred to as "private labeling."
This is where a vendor selects an already-existing product design from a factory catalog, makes a few small changes and sells it under their own brand name. Changes can include things like packaging or product bundles, colors and branding, and some limited adjustments to components or functionality.
ODM is different from OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) in that suppliers manufacture products based on the product design and specifications provided by their client. The client does all the market research, R&D and develops its own product.
In fact, it makes sense if OnePlus make this adjustment.
According to Pete Lau, founder, and CEO of OnePlus, OnePlus has achieved good results in the high-end flagship market. However, in terms of sales in the high-end flagship market, the global market is still mainly occupied by Apple and Samsung.
Although Huawei has improved in the past two years, due to restrictions on overseas markets in 2019, Huawei's high-end flagship market is also limited to the Chinese market.
For OnePlus phones, its so-called high-end flagship market, from the market pricing point of view, is the level of the flagship phone of the Chinese mobile phone brand, and Huawei's flagship machine pricing is still slightly different, compared with Samsung and Apple's flagship machine the gap is even greater.
From the perspective of OnePlus' main battlefield, its main markets were Europe and India.
With the escalation of the overseas epidemic, OnePlus, the main battlefield in the European and Indian markets has undoubtedly been greatly affected. In particular, the Indian market is in a state of "shutdown".
In this regard, Pete Lau also admitted that the Indian epidemic will affect all local mobile phone brands, but on the one hand, the closure of the city will be lifted in May, on the other hand, the online channel will definitely resume earlier than the offline channel, and the online channel is also OnePlus Has always been an advantage.
At the same time, he also emphasized that OnePlus will vigorously expand the North American market.
In any case, for OnePlus, which mainly focuses on the European, American and Indian markets, the situation under the epidemic is not optimistic. Under such circumstances, OnePlus has accelerated its investment in the Chinese market.
According to Pete Lau: "With the increase in investment in the Chinese market, he expects the proportion of sales in China to increase further this year."
But we all know that competition in the Chinese market is already very fierce, especially Huawei and Xiaomi are brutally fighting in the low-end market.
Many of them are designed by ODM manufacturers. In 2019, Samsung announced that it will increase its investment in the Chinese market, and even closed the factory in Huizhou. It also started from the ODM project. After all, ODM is for Huawei the role played by Xiaomi cannot be underestimated.
According to the above report, according to Samsung's previous plan, 60 million to 100 million ODM orders will be released to Chinese manufacturers this year, and it is aimed at the global market.
For OnePlus, starting with ODM manufacturers, handing over orders to ODM manufacturers will save time and effort.
But this is only the first step. Whether OnePlus' ODM phones can sell well in the Chinese market depends not only on the design and quality of the products, but also on their channels and marketing capabilities.
In 2020, OnePlus will focus its efforts on the Chinese market to start with ODM manufacturers, and it is not known how much chance it will have.
However, when Samsung started to invest heavily in ODM projects to promote the Chinese market last year, many people in the industry believed that Samsung's opportunities in China were not great.
Of course, there are also successful cases starting with ODM, that is Realme.
Realme has developed from the Indian market to the Chinese market. It can be said that ODM manufacturers have contributed greatly, and there are also many ODM orders. But for OnePlus, can it replicate Realme's model?
