Brexit Needlessly Causes OnePlus 3 £20 Price Hike

Published: 8 July 2016Updated: 11 July 2016

14508745620_a2706a076d_zThe fallout from Brexit has left nothing untouched as now; even our sweetheart gadget industry is starting to feel its consequential effects.

The people of United Kingdom decided (or more accurately voted, since the decision hasn’t yet been made official and the voting result hasn’t been, yet, adopted by the government) to finally leave the EU about a week ago and since then it has been a freefall as far as UK’s economy is concerned.

Tech companies, even before the result of the vote was announced, feared the adverse effects of UK possibly leaving EU but now their fears are likely to become nightmares as companies look to shift to the next business hub of Europe.

One of the tech companies that haven’t announced any plans of moving its business away from the UK is OnePlus. Now, OnePlus is a company that shot into fame about two years ago with its launch of OnePlus One mobile that worked like a high-end mobile phone but was immensely light on consumer pockets.

OnePlus’s next smartphone, OnePlus Two, further increased the company’s stocks as it garnered rave reviews from the majority of technology experts for the phone’s amazing value, screentone, fingerprint scanner and a good quality camera.

But now, it seems, the company isn’t too interested in benefiting the consumers any further as OnePlus has announced that, as a result of the falling British Pound, it will revisit the prices consumers will have to pay for its mobile phones.

The announcement has now turned what many had feared into a reality, as from July 11th and onwards, the price that consumers will have to pay, for much exalted OnePlus 3 would increase from £309 to £329.

To some, that may not seem like much but if you do the math, it is a 10 percent increase in price for the consumers who will not get much, if any, in return from the company.

But it’s not all doom and gloom in the gadget world as you can still, before next Monday, get the “all new and improved” OnePlus 3 smartphone for the same old price of £309.

16191567401_f985a4bc4a_zOnePlus is also expected to keep the accessory prices for its phones the same as before without increasing them further from their current levels.

So, now, you know (or the company wants you to know), that you should probably hurry up and buy the new phone in order to take advantage of the old price, does it all beg the question of whether this seemingly unplanned Brexit reaction was necessary?

Without getting into the details of what economic undergraduates study in their classrooms, it should be crystal clear to anyone that any and every international company that operates within the United Kingdom is going through the same financial burden because of the devalued pound.

Some would argue that the pound was bound to descend in any case even if there was no Brexit vote but now, tech companies have to come to grips with these new realities.

Nevertheless, how many companies have actually increased the prices of their gadgets since Brexit, let alone inside two weeks from the actual vote?

Let’s be completely honest here and accept the fact that OnePlus has been a major player in bringing high-end phones within the reach of a larger portion of the consumer market and as a result of that, has always thrived on razor thin [profit] margins.

But can we really believe that if the company doesn’t react to the chaos caused by Brexit like a violent maniac, it would cease to exist? Can UK leaving the EU trigger OnePlus to pack up its business and just shut down?

Unlike four years ago, OnePlus isn’t a startup anymore. It is effectively owned by the fourth largest smartphone manufacturer on planet earth, named Oppo. And let’s not forget the fact that Oppo is further a subsidiary of an even bigger tech corporation, Oppo Electronics Corps.

The point that readers need to understand is that OnePlus is now a big enough company to not thrive or get destroyed because of an added £20 price on its products. Or more precisely one, one of its products.

Oddly enough, OnePlus has tried to justify its actions on the basis of the dollar to pound exchange rate even though, in the past, it has claimed that most of the company’s expenses are in US dollars.

Readers might ask why that is odd. Well, it’s odd because, as most of you know already, OnePlus is Chinese Company and has its headquarters in the city of Shenzhen, so it raises the obvious question that shouldn’t pound to Chinese Yuan exchange rate matter more to OnePlus?

But we’ll give this a pass since the pound to Chinese Yuan exchange rate has also taken quite a hit following Brexit.

And before we sign off, the one thing people aren’t asking OnePlus is that what (or who) is forcing the company to not move their legitimately earned British pounds into some  other currency of preference and then change it back one the recovery process starts.

Evidently, the signs of recovery are few and far between and that actually somewhat proves that OnePlus is making a smart business decision to put the burden of losses, due to bad currency situation, onto the consumers rather than their own stakeholders sooner rather than later.

Whether that will go down well with consumers who are already under such pressure because of problems with minimum wage and recession is anyone’s guess.

OnePlus certainly will not get any sympathy points for raising prices on one of its more popular product.

So if you thought that this was a rant then you were completely, comprehensively and one hundred percent, right.

And before we all forget, OnePlus 3 will cost £329 from next Monday onwards.

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