OnePlus announces it’s building a “OnePlus TV”

Enlarge / OnePlus' last phone, the OnePlus 6. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Here's an unexpected news item that popped up over the weekend: OnePlus, the Android smartphone maker, wants to start making televisions. OnePlus CEO Pete Lau made an announcement on the company forums that a smart TV was on the way. "We are building a new product of OnePlus' premium flagship design, image quality, and audio experience to more seamlessly connect the home," Lau said. "We call it: OnePlus TV."

OnePlus made a name for itself in the smartphone space by shipping high-end, quality smartphones at a low price. There are other Chinese firms, like OnePlus rival Xiaomi, that are also using price as a big differentiator, but OnePlus does business in Western markets like the US and Europe that Xiaomi won't touch. There have been some bumps along the way, and OnePlus raises its prices every year, but the company's products are still a good value.

Building a TV certainly seems to be in the realm of possibility for OnePlus. The company has already released eight smartphones in five years, and it broke into the Western market with zero brand recognition. OnePlus didn't do this on its own. The company won't say that Oppo (owned by Chinese smartphone giant BBK) is its parent company, but the two companies are very close. The official line is that OnePlus "leases Oppo's manufacturing line," "shares part of the supply chain," and "shares common investors" with Oppo. This close relationship with Oppo has allowed the company to survive the cutthroat world of launching a new smartphone brand. Consider the companies that have crashed and burned in the US smartphone market around the same time OnePlus was succeeding: products from Amazon, Facebook, Blackberry, Essential, LeEco, and Nextbit are all dead. Huawei and Xiaomi can't get a sustained US presence off the ground, and ZTE's misdeeds in the US have nearly killed the company. Somehow, OnePlus just keeps going.

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