The OnePlus 5T has been rumoured for a good few months now, and most expect it to land this month. The timing could not be better as well, as this is the very time that Apple’s most expensive iPhone – The iPhone X – will land in stores.
The OnePlus 5T will cost a lot less than Apple’s iPhone X, most likely by a margin of about 40-50%, and this makes for great marketing material. Why? Simple, people love value for money, especially when you’re getting top-shelf specs and hardware.
The timing of the OnePlus 5T launch and release, therefore, could not be better. As people are reeling from the RRP of the iPhone X, OnePlus will ramp up its OnePlus 5T marketing campaign in places where it will have an impact, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, and use this to its advantage.
It will position the OnePlus 5T as “another way, a cheaper way… a better way” – and it will probably work as well. Why? Because it will speak directly to the purse strings of anyone that is A) annoyed by the iPhone X price, B) can’t afford the iPhone X, or C) wants to try and save some money in 2017/18 by getting away from lengthy 24-month contracts with car lease-sized payments.
Basically, three really solid angles.
This is what OnePlus built its business on: giving people what they REALLY want; flagship phones at reduced prices. I know, I know – Apple will still sell gazillions of its new iPhone X. But that’s not the point; the point is that OnePlus can and, most likely, will use the iPhone X release as a potent marketing angle.
It’ll use it for contrast, to highlight why you don’t need to spend £1000/$1000+ on a phone in late-2017, and this message will get through to a lot of people because, let's face it, the iPhone X for many is prohibitively expensive. I mean, when I spend £1000 on something, I kind of what to have a keyboard and a monitor, normally.
The main points where OnePlus could make a lot of friends with the OnePlus 5T are, in my opinion, the following:
Design – it can show that top rate design doesn’t cost the earth.
Camera – it can show that you can still have excellent camera performance on a smaller budget.
Performance and specs – it will feature high-end specs and great performance.
Price – the main selling point; retailing the handset for £400/$500 less than the iPhone X will entice a lot of price-sensitive adoptees that can’t stomach the iPhone X’s lofty price tag.
In this context, it is a great time for OnePlus to launch a new handset. OnePlus does not try to compete with Apple or Samsung directly, so to speak, but rather offers another route for savvy shoppers. It positions against the norms of the market – norms that now say phones should cost £1000/$1000 – and this approach, given the newly inflated price of phones, could well pay dividends in Q4 2017.
Perhaps OnePlus should tag the OnePlus 5T’s marketing campaign as, “Another Way…”
