Wearables are finding their way to more and more wrists and ankles, and the trend is growing all the time — so it’s no surprise that hardware makers want to get in on the action as soon as possible. One firm that isn’t jumping on the bandwagon for the foreseeable future is OnePlus, which recently abandoned plans to launch a wearable device at the last minute.
Speaking to TechRadar, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei said his company was interested in launching a fitness tracker — and a Bluetooth speaker — but pulled the plug a month before the devices were about to hit the market. Understandably, the engineers working on the projects weren’t best pleased that all their hard work counted for nothing.
As Pei explained to TechRadar: “We asked ourselves, what is the goal? We decided we needed to focus on smartphones, to ensure we’re launching quality products and leave the wearables and speakers to the people who know what they’re doing.”
So make of that what you will — Pei says the company is going to continue to focus on its flagship phone and the more stylish X range, with no plans to add more handsets at different price points at this stage. Customer service and the OxygenOS software developed by the firm are also going to be prioritized in the years ahead, according to Pei.
It makes sense for OnePlus to focus its efforts behind a couple of major products rather than spread itself too thinly — it doesn’t have the huge resources of a Samsung or an LG after all — but it would’ve been interesting to see what the innovative company would have done with the wearable fitness tracker format. Let’s hope it might revisit the idea again at some point in the not-too-distant future.
