OnePlus wades into direct-to-consumer sales by partnering with O2 in the U.K.

By Christian de Looper Published September 27, 2016

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OnePlus may still be a young company, but few other device makers — apart from Samsung and Apple — have managed to captivate the smartphone industry as much as OnePlus has.

While the company has long distributed its phones directly to consumers, it’s now working on making its distribution methods a little more diverse. The company has announced an exclusive partnership with O2 to deliver the “flagship-killer” OnePlus 3 in the U.K.

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What does the partnership mean? Well, the OnePlus 3 will now be available in O2 stores across the U.K., helping raise awareness about the company. The OnePlus 3 will be the first device to take part in the new partnership, but it likely won’t be the only one. It will be available through O2 retail stores starting on September 29, and starts at 28 British pounds per month for 500MB of data and no costs upfront.

According to an article from The Verge, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei thinks that selling the phone direct to consumers may not be the best option in the long run.

The OnePlus 3, like other OnePlus phones, is aimed at delivering flagship-quality specs at a far lower price than the competition. The OnePlus 3, for example, boasts a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, a whopping 6GB of RAM, and a $399 price tag.

This isn’t the first time that OnePlus has worked with carriers — the company launched the OnePlus 3 on Finland’s Elisa carrier shortly after the phone was first released. The method was pretty successful — The OnePlus 3 was reportedly the best-selling phone in Finland during the month of August.

It’s likely we’ll see OnePlus form more partnerships with carriers as time goes on. The company is based in China, but it’s definitely targeting the Western market right now.

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Christian de Looper

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Christian de Looper is a long-time freelance writer who has covered every facet of the consumer tech and electric vehicle…

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