It now seems that OnePlus is looking at plans to discontinue the OnePlus 5 in favor of the OnePlus 5T. The OP5T had recently been unveiled and it is a more refined version of the original OnePlus 5. Given that the company had practiced the same business model previously as well, it does not seem surprising that the OnePlus 5 will soon be retracted.
The claim was first made by Vikas Aggarwal, who is the GM of the company in India. Aggarwal has said that once the stocks of the existing OnePlus 5 devices are sold out, the OnePlus 5T will be the only phones which they will start selling from various sources. This also means that given the fact that the OnePlus 3T had been sold out in the festive season last year, the 3T has now been discontinued. Given that the company has always prided itself on being the flagship killer, it seems that the OnePlus 5T is their best bet as of now.
The OnePlus 5T is a great advancement over the OnePlus 5 and has a lot of greatly improved features. It is therefore not merely a technical or a cosmetic change or upheaval of the original device. When pressed, the GM also stated that the company had, as of now, no plans of introducing any mid-range phones in the Indian market. Clearly, OnePlus is intent on projecting itself as a premium segment product without touching any of the other product tiers.
A recent survey by IDC has indicated that OnePlus 5 has surpassed other established players like Samsung and Apple as far as premium segment sales are considered. In India, the OnePlus 5T has a decent competitive edge. For the 64 GB and 128 GB OnePlus 5T models, the prices, respectively, are Rs. 32,999 (or ~$507) and a more premium Rs. 37,999 (or ~$584) in India. Only Amazon has the license to sell them online. Are you looking forward to upgrading to one as of now? Let us know.
