OnePlus, the Shenzhen-based premium phone maker was ready to unveil its new OnePlus 6T smartphone on October 30 in New York City. But then technology giant Apple decided to host its product launch event on that date, in the same City and take away OnePlus’ limelight. Instead of getting discouraged or being egotistic to acknowledge the impact of the clash, OnePlus turned the situation in its favour by preponing the date of its event by one day.
In an interview, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei said the ability of the company to “resist the temptation and pressures” helps the firm to overcome challenges and make the right decisions. Mr. Pei, who recently trained himself to run a marathon by reading a self-help book, said the secret sauce of his company’s success is not to bring “cool and shiniest features” in its products but “refining the details” and improving the consumer experience. Mr. Pei also shared insights about the uniqueness of the company’s new 6T model, the 5G phone it aims to release next year and plans of making smart TVs and smartwatches. Edited excerpts:
The phones in recent years have been getting incremental improvements but they are not game changers. What innovations are you working on, especially at a time when Samsung is expected to release a foldable phone next year?
For us, innovation is not the number one thing. If you look at the history of the smartphones, the people who are first with [cool] features aren't the ones who are the most successful. It is rather the people who put the user experience first. One example is the dual camera, [which] was available in smartphones very early maybe in 2012 but it wasn't until 2016 when it started becoming ubiquitous. And in those four years, the dual camera systems kept improving...rather than just being a technical showcase. That's why we also chose to wait until 2017 for OnePlus 5 to have the dual camera. So it's not about...saying that we have something really cool and shiny, but something that creates delight in the daily interaction. I think the real battlefield for us, or what we're really challenging ourselves to is user experience and refinement. One such example is OnePlus 6T. In terms of the screen, we tried to have as [more] screen and little bezel. We implemented the screen unlock, the screen can act as the fingerprint scanner...I think as the new technology slows down, we really need to focus even more on refinement and getting as close as possible to perfection.
Reports say that you are going to launch one of the first 5G enabled phones called OnePlus 7 after few months next year. What impact do you see 5G technology having on the phone industry and would it be fair for the consumers who are going to buy 6T in November this year?
First of all, I have to clarify that I've never said which product is going to run on 5G and also never announced any release date for that product. I just said that it's very important for us. For us, this comes back to how to make choices and how to focus on what’s important. If you look at the 5G opportunity, it's actually not a great business opportunity. The reason is 5G networks are very new. It's primarily going to be rolled out in East Asia, North America and Europe. And in the beginning, regular consumers don't even know what 5G means. The reason why it's very important to us is that our community really asked for it. [They] expect us to be always be at the forefront of the best technology. We see that 5G in long term is going to be a huge paradigm shift in mobile [industry] but probably not next year. We don't think that we are much smarter than everyone else… [but] at certain critical junction in our company history, we resisted the temptation and pressures and we were able to make the right decision. [For example,] we announced that we're going to release [6T] on the October 30, and then another company [Apple] much bigger than ours [decided to launch its products] in the same city and on the same day. There was a lot of internal discussion [about] “we're first, we shouldn't bow down to someone bigger than us, we should be proud.” But if you put all these pressures aside, what's the real thing that we're trying to do? We want to make great products and share it with as many people as possible...So by moving [the event] one day ahead, for some of our team members, it [meant] they had to swallow their pride. It wasn't a very popular decision internally, but it [was] still a more rational decision.
I think that's actually one of the keys why we've been able to stick around and [have been] quite successful is because we were able to make difficult decisions that others might not have made. When it comes to 5G, it's another example but in a positive direction. We're really going for this because we really believe in it.
Xiaomi recently unveiled Poco F1 a budget phone with features like Snapdragon 845 processor and large 4,000 mAh battery found in high-end phones and Huawei is talking about artificial intelligence feature in its cameras. Would OnePlus rethink its pricing strategy?
I think in the industry, I see a lot of people who might not have a deep understanding of the product. This manifest itself in situations where the merits of a product becomes reduced to a spec sheets [or a] checklist. “Does it have this processor, this feature? Okay, check.” But that's a very limited way to view a product because it is actually so much more than just specs.
Take something like having the fingerprint scanner inside the screen. There are other products also with screen unlock. But if you get to experience the OnePlus 6T, you will see that it's the fastest and the latest generation technology. So the experience is actually very different...When it comes to a concept like AI, in my mind it is like the things we see in science fiction movies. The closest I've seen to AI in the smartphone world is Google Duplex, the Google Assistant being able to call up a restaurant [to book a table]. If you say that the [phone] camera can detect different types of lights and environments and change settings based on that, then my digital camera also did the same 10 years ago. So I think for us, it's important not to confuse the consumer, but just show them that [the camera] is easy to use and it's good. We actually have a lot of machine learning aspects in our product as well [for example face unlock feature].
India is the world’s second-largest smartphone market after China and most people here buy these phones in the price range of ₹6,000 to ₹20,000? What is your strategy to compete with players like Samsung and Xiaomi who are wooing consumers in this segment?
It's true that the premium market in India today is quite small. But it's also true that the Indian economy is growing quite quickly if you compare it to the other economies of the world. We've seen that whenever people get more disposable income...they want better products to accompany their lifestyle. [We are] firmly taking this position in the premium space, it's like a fisherman casting a net and we're just waiting for the wave to come one day and then we'll catch the fish. But by focusing on everything, we're never going to be really good at creating premium smartphones. And then when the wave comes, we're not going to be able to catch the fish. We believe that it's [wave] going to come sooner than later.
And despite the fact that the premium market is quite small in India today, it's still quite big, because India has a big population. I think it's more [important for] us doing our own job better. If all of your energy is spent on seeing what others are doing and trying to catch up, you are going to be like a piece of paper and the wind is blowing it back and forth, you're not going to have strong roots.
According to reports, last year a security researcher discovered that OnePlus was collecting information from its users. How are you convincing your community that OnePlus respects their privacy?
This entire topic around privacy and data rights is going to become an increasing concern globally. European Union is taking a lot of steps to protect its citizens. In India and China, the governments are taking similar steps. But I think in the end, your track record and reputation is the only thing that you have. It might be better to just do the right things. And then over time, people understand what you stand for. But after some of our incidents...we openly told the community, what happened? How many were affected? Why did it happen? and the steps we're taking to mitigate it. We issued communication as soon as we had a solution to the problem...we changed our systems as soon as possible. Now we are in line with the best practices of the industry.
How are your plans to develop smart TVs progressing and would OnePlus make other ecosystem products as well such as smartwatches and speakers?
Regarding the TV project, I think it's going well. It took us five years to enter a new category. We're very deliberate when we do something like this. So it's probably not going to be another category anytime soon. Smartwatch is quite interesting, but I don't think we have a solution for it. Because we only want to create premium technology experiences. That's the only thing we're good at. When it comes to TV...we also said we wanted to transfer ethos of premium experiences to the smart TV space. If you want to make a premium smartwatch it's a little bit contradictory... but technology moves quite quickly. If you buy a $20,000 or $10,000 watch, you wouldn't want to change it in 18 or 24 months. I want to buy a really cheap watch then that's not what we're good at. I don't think we're going to do a smartwatch anytime soon.
