Although the anti-China sentiment is at an all-time high in the country following the aggression in Ladakh, Chinese premium smartphone manufacturer OnePlus has sold its flagship OnePlus 8 Pro within minutes of going on sale on Amazon India on June 18. However, the company is yet to release the number of units it made available for the Amazon flash sale. OnePlus is a direct rival to Samsung and Apple in the Indian market and is quite popular in the price segment of more than Rs 30,000.
Though OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro were released in April, due to the lockdown, the devices had not been brought into the Indian market. OnePlus 8 in India began selling on May 18, and OnePlus 8 Pro began selling on June 15 though only in limited quantities.
OnePlus had previously said it is witnessing enormous demand in India for the OnePlus 8 Series and it is working to ensure a consistent supply of those devices. Until then it will hold sales on Mondays and Thursdays.
Factors like nearly two months of lockdown and people working and studying from home have created a pent-up demand for smartphones and many companies have had to resort to expensive imports to meet the demanding spurt, they said.
Four of India’s top five smartphone brands (Xiaomi, Vivo, Realme, and Oppo) are from China, accounting for nearly 76 per cent of India’s 32.5 million smartphones shipped in the March 2020 quarter (IDC data shows).
South Korea’s Samsung, which had a 15.6% share of the shipment in that quarter, is the only non-Chinese company in the top five tallies. India is the second-largest smartphone market after China and clocked 152.5 million smartphone shipments in 2019.
