Chinese smartphone giant OnePlus is planning to introduce new devices in the below-Rs 20,000 price range with an eye on India’s budget phone market. The smartphones are likely to be launched in India in April-June next year. The upcoming devices are expected to use the ‘Nord’ branding. At present, all OnePlus devices with Nord branding are priced above Rs 20,000.

Rumours about the launch of affordable phones started after the OnePlus brand merged with Oppo. Both brands are owned by China-based BLK Electronics and they’ll be merging their operating systems Oxygen OS and Color OS to improve efficiency of the phones.

Freelance Journalist and Data Engineer Yogesh Bar tweeted about the same. He said the company is going "through a shift and the sub-20k phones for India are on the cards."

Oppo has always been linked to OnePlus one way or the other. But now they are dictating the terms. OnePlus is going through a shift, and sub 20k phones for India are on the cards.No defined timeline for now, could see them as early as next quarter or Q2'22

— Yogesh Brar (@heyitsyogesh) September 8, 2021

Until 2019, the tech giant focused on releasing two flagship series phones every year. It changed its strategy last year with the launch of the Nord series. Since then, OnePlus has launched several affordable Nord devices like Nord, Nord 2, Nord CE 5G.

The latest phone launched by OnePlus in India was the OnePlus Nord 2 and OnePlus Nord CE 5G. They came with a price tag of Rs 27,999 and 24,999, respectively.

The budget smartphone segment in India is ready for action, with players like Redmi, Realme, TECNO and Infinix jumping in with their affordable offerings. Currently, there is no details available on the features of the upcoming OnePlus budget phones. It is expected that with this launch strategy, the company might be looking to capture the budget smartphone segment in the Indian market.

The company is preparing to launch its new smartphone OnePlus 9 RT in October this year. The phone may come with a starting price of Rs 35,000.

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)