OnePlus is dead in the US. Has it ever been lucky?

After eight years, OnePlus announced today that it has exited the United States. It’s bittersweet, because the brand has been on a comeback tour of sorts The best OnePlus 15 and highly recommended (although still very expensive) OnePlus Open.

The writing has been on the wall for a while now. T-Mobile stopped stocking OnePlus phones after 2022, instead deciding to carry only its low-end Nord devices, and Verizon’s run with OnePlus lasted just two years, from 2020 to 2021. In January, Themes for Android even reported that the model is being discontinued, although OnePlus denied the report.

This result did not seem inevitable. In 2014, when the OnePlus One was launched, almost every tech enthusiast I knew was buying a phone. There was a cult-like following for OnePlus that was hard to find anywhere else, and it used a crowd-sourced approach to build long-lasting, loyal fans. For a while, it was impossible to call any other phone “good” when the OnePlus phone was around.

But most of the sales were online-only, directly from OnePlus. When they decided to launch it officially through US carriers, it was probably doomed from the start.

OnePlus first launched on a US carrier in 2018, and according to T-Mobile, about 200,000 customers was using OnePlus phones on its network before carrying these devices. That’s far from Samsung or Apple’s numbers, either about 90 percent Of all the phones sold to US carriers in 2020, but there was a case for T-Mobile trying to capture the growing OnePlus fans.

OnePlus has built its loyal fanbase mainly through the “Never Settle” moniker, meaning you don’t have to settle for cheap when buying a cheap phone. He used the words “Flag killer” describing this ratio of price and performance, and fans ate. Especially in 2014, towards the end of “2-year phone contract,” people were asking for a device you could buy without being locked into a long and hostile relationship with your telecom.

But that’s not how people buy phones in the US. Here, it’s all about the carrier, especially the bills. A rental bill gets the phone in your hands right away, often with no upfront cost, and the cost of the phone is reduced to your phone plan for 24 to 36 months. T-Mobile is offering the new 256GB iPhone 17 Pro today for $4.16 per month on top of your phone plan. If you’re on AT&T, you can get the same phone for just $2.78 a month, as long as you trade in the phone and “upgrade to an eligible unlimited plan.” And yes, this affordable plan starts at $80 per month. If you exchange carriers early, you will owe the remainder of the purchase price of the phone.

You can see why this would encourage a carrier to focus on selling expensive billboards rather than “cheap” show killers. Carriers want to give you the idea of ​​a deal, and if your new phone feels like it costs less than three bucks a month, it is to hear much better than paying $600 out of pocket, even if you’re paying more than that in the long run.

What made OnePlus attractive was the very opposite of this brand. Is the price of a $600 “flag killer” worth $1,200 if there is no visible price difference? Carriers need you to stay on top of their plans, and if they only have $600 hanging over your head instead of $1,200, they have little incentive to carry this equipment. In addition to the fact that 75 percent of all phones sold in retail stores are now iPhonesand Samsung is making 15 percent or moreand there isn’t much pie left to go around.

The main line that has done well for OnePlus in the US is its affordable Nord series, the company is expected to grow by 428 percent in the first half of 2021. But after losing its contract with T-Mobile in 2022, it was very difficult for OnePlus to move the volume. The US phone market is dependent on carriers in almost every way, and without T-Mobile stores carrying the phones, it was difficult for OnePlus to justify even selling the Nord here.

OnePlus’ ethos has always been about value. This is in stark contrast to the way the US mobile market is promoted, which prioritizes locking users into long-term relationships. OnePlus had already fought for the rest here. OnePlus tried to kill the flagship, but in the end it was the banners, sold by carriers, that killed OnePlus.