OnePlus has no foldable phone in the pipeline, and the reason is easy to guess
It's probably not a good idea to jump at the opportunity of buying a foldable mobile device right away, but as far as smartphone manufacturers are concerned, all of the industry's big names seem to want in on the ground floor of this genuinely exciting innovation. Samsung, Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, LG, Motorola, even Alcatel, you name it, they're likely building or refining a foldable design as we speak.
But the same can't be said about Apple, which is unlikely to unveil the iPhone Steve Wozniak wants earlier than the fall of 2020, and at least in this aspect, OnePlus appears to be adopting a similar wait-and-see strategy. Of course, the two companies' reasons for sitting this breakthrough out might be radically different, as the smaller mobile device vendor doesn't think the "value to the end user" correlates with the sky-high production costs and prohibitive resulting retail prices.
Otherwise put, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau just confirmed to CNET his company considered the benefits of an early foldable product, but even though this is a "very interesting" concept, there's simply no way to keep costs down to an acceptable level for the brand and its passionate fanbase. That's basically the same argument presented by Honor to justify its own hesitancy in joining the foldable game this year, but unfortunately, OnePlus is not ready to predict prices will go down enough in 2020.
The company's unique business model and somewhat limited resources are naturally leaving little room for experimentation, especially when compared to tech giants like Samsung and Huawei. Nonetheless, a 5G-enabled device is coming soon, a preview of which was offered to MWC 2019 attendees in Barcelona, and it looks like the OnePlus 7 will be something different. In other words, the company is willing to take a chance on 5G connectivity at a relatively early stage in its global deployment, but not on a foldable form factor.
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