This year marks an interesting turning point for OnePlus. In December, it will hit the five year mark. The Oppo-backed company has managed to grow significantly in that relatively short window. Back in June, it noted that it had sold one million units of its latest smartphone in the first 22 days.
Continued growth will require some strategic partnerships. In the States, that means partnering with a carrier — after all, most smartphone users still purchase devices through those channels here. Fittingly, along today’s launch of the 6T, OnePlus is announcing its first U.S. carrier partner, T-Mobile.
Why choose the third largest carrier? Here’s what CEO Pete Lau says of the deal, “T-Mobile is the perfect wireless partner for us in the US. The OnePlus 6T clocks some serious speed, and we wanted our customers to unleash it on the fastest network in the nation.”
T-Mobile’s foul mouthed CEO John Legere also notes that somewhere in the neighborhood of 200k OnePlus owners are using their unlocked handsets with the carrier. In addition to whatever sort of deals were worked out between the two companies, T-Mobile’s size offers a good opportunity to help OnePlus grow at a manageable rate. That kind of modest expansion has long been a key to the company’s success.
While other smartphone manufacturers are falling over themselves to one up the competition, OnePlus has focused on offering a solid handset at a decent price. But even $549 looks intimidating to users accustom to purchasing phones at carrier subsidized rates.
The 6T will be available from T-Mobile on November 1 — though folks in New York City can pick one up starting tonight at the T-Mobile store in Times Square.
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