Chinese upstart smartphone manufacturer OnePlus has officially started selling its flagship smartphone One, along with the complete range of accessories, in 16 further European countries, bringing the total number of its overseas markets to 35.
The new European markets are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia, which means that OnePlus One will be accessible to everyone across the entire European Union.
The smartphone retails at EUR269 (US$287)/CZK8089/HUF94199/PLN1299 for the Silk White 16GB version or EUR299/CZK8989/HUF104999 /PLN1449 for the Sandstone Black 64GB model.
Aiming to build a global brand from its inception, OnePlus was initially sold in 17 countries across North America, Western Europe, and East Asia, later adding Indonesia and India.
With just a single handset released so far, the company has managed to establish a global presence with premium specs and affordable prices, expanding rapidly from around 30 employees to almost 700 in just over a year. The company’s CEO Pete Lau shared the company’s beginning and global expansion at TechCrunch Beijing last year.
The firm’s global plan has encountered some setbacks in India. At the end of last year, the local government barred the company from selling One in India due to disputes centering around Cyanogen’s version of Android, licensed exclusively to rival phone maker Micromax in India. Although the authorities has withdrawn the previous order, the incident has motivated OnePlus to speed up the development of its homegrown OxygenOS to gain control of the software on its devices.
OnePlus is planning to launch a new product category in April and the release of OnePlus Two is scheduled for Q3 2015.
Editing by Mike Cormack (@bucketoftongues)