OnePlus One invites?

What do you guys think of the invite system with a lot of guys begging for invites and some selling on ebay ?
Seems to be too good to be true when they say things like

Not plan to make any money for two years: We are fine with not making any money on our smartphones for two years, to give more people the chance to experience the quality of our devices, and help uss build a name.

We're still thinking of ways in which we could become profitable in the future, and here are some of our current ideas:

  • Accessories: We will not sell accessories at cost, and will keep a reasonable margin on them. If a customer buys accessories together with our device, we can earn a few dollars.
  • Scale: Because our initial quantities are small, our hardware costs are quite high. Once we can sell millions of devices a year, the component costs will fall and we'll be able to have a slight margin on our smartphones without raising the price.
  • Services: Providing services through software may be a long term solution to make some money. However, it's too early to think about it as these things require scale. This will only be interesting once we have millions of active users.

closed Comments

  • I think they are still making money off the device otherwise why would they really bother. Most phones don't cost that much to physically make (taking away R&D).

    John from technobuffalo said it was the best phone he had ever used and considering that he goes through a lot of devices that to me says a lot.

    (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDeb_9qBwhs)

    • I will note it is using cyanogen mod, pretty much anything running cyanogen mod runs really well speed wise.

    • But how can they get it that cheap with those hardware for that price and still make any money?

      • zero advertising, running the entire thing out of china, slave labour, no cuts to middle men.

  • See Oppo ownership controversy. Basically they are 100% owned by Oppo Electronics, a much larger consumer electronics company. However I guess for marketing purpose to show that it's a start-up bootstrapped effort (to gain media attention I guess), they invented this weird invite system to purchase the phone. People like to talk about scarcity I guess, especially artificial ones.

    For now you can either try to get into their invite system. Or just head down to DWI / eGlobal Digital Cameras and buy the 16GB one for under $400.

    • I guess scarcity make people want it more :O . Their invite system is just a mess, too little supply for demand. With the Oppo Electronics as their parent , I would assume they are more than capable to beat demand for the phone.

      I feel as if they would increase their price with the current demand they might a profits quick. but I am quite interested in their marketing "strategy" and see what it gets them :)

      Cheers will try to buy off DWI/eGlobal , totally sick of their forums .

    • +1

      I bit the bullet tonight and ordered the 64gb from t-dimension.
      just over $470 with fedex post (2-4 day post).

      looking forward to getting it in my hands.

  • I've got some invites for the 64GB sandstone black official international model, PM me if you still need one.

    Will probably need to redeem via a VPN and dropship as I don't think they are 'live' yet for Oz.

    • Now all gone.

  • Please continue invite discussion in existing thread.

Login or Join to leave a comment