OnePlus TV: OnePlus says don’t expect TV to be ‘half the price’ of rivals

After having established itself in the premium smartphone segment, OnePlus is looking to tap India's growing smart TV segment. The new portfolio, conveniently called OnePlus TV, will debut in India next month. Ahead of the official launch, OnePlus has begun dropping details of its latest smart device.

There has been a lot of speculation around the pricing of OnePlus TV. Considering the "flagship killer" moniker and disruptive pricing strategy, OnePlus TV was widely rumoured to be priced much lower than Samsung's and Sony's. Turns out, OnePlus TV won't be that cheap.

CEO Pete Lau revealed that OnePlus TV will come with a 55-inch QLED screen. It is worth noting here that Samsung uses QLED for quantum-dot LED screen technology - believed to be an extension to the contemporary OLED screen. The two technologies, however, are fundamentally different from each other. QLED is said to be an upgraded version of LCD screens.

"In terms of pricing, we want to benchmark against the most premium products available in the market, which means we are benchmarking against Samsung and Sony," Lau told Gadgets360. "Because of the strategic partnership with Amazon, our price may be slightly cheaper than their [Sony and Samsung] products, but it won't be half the price."

"We are going to focus on the premium positioning, and we are only focusing on the flagship premium positioning. Like I mentioned, we want to benchmark our products against Samsung and Sony — those high-end premium products and we don't necessarily benchmark against some lower tier products," he added.

Lau's comments suggest that OnePlus TV won't be following the footsteps of Xiaomi, at least in terms of pricing. Xiaomi offers smart TVs for as low as ₹12,499 and has succeeded in becoming one of the top smart TV brands in the online segment. The company's bet on OTT partnerships has also paid off. Xiaomi has about 39% of market share in the smart TV segment followed by LG at 15% and Samsung at 12%.

OnePlus is hoping the focus on "premium" and "quality" experience will help the company in the segment.

"If I wanna highlight one feature, it will be premium quality plus great user experience. I wanna highlight that we have really great content Internet experience. Like I mentioned, we benchmark against Sony's sound quality and Samsung's image quality — so we are taking advantage of our competitors' advantages, and then we compare our advantages to their advantages, and make their advantage to become ours," Lau said.

Some of the key features Lau revealed include an optimised version of Android TV, smartphone app to let the phone control the TV, and access to OTT content. OnePlus has already confirmed the smart TV will leverage technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. The smart TV will be available online via Amazon.in.

WATCH: OnePlus 7 Pro Unboxing, First Look