This week’s teasers and rumors about the upcoming OnePlus launch cycle are setting 2022 up to be a particularly rough year for the once plucky smartphone brand. The company’s official announcement today even lacked any mention of arguably the tastiest morsel — a regular OnePlus 10. So it’s become abundantly clear that OnePlus is relying entirely on the 10 Pro to steer its flagship range this year. However, affordable flagships rather than super-premium products are supposed to be the bread and butter of OnePlus’ strategy. In that regard, the upcoming 10 Pro global launch is clearly missing the mark.
This wouldn’t be the first time OnePlus struggled to deliver on its traditional “flagship killer” business model. It took an age for the more affordable 8GB/128GB variant of 2021’s OnePlus 9 Pro to hit the markets, leading some to speculate if the variant existed in name only so that OnePlus could advertise a lower price than consumers could actually pay. Combined with increasing prices in recent years, it’s never been harder to actually buy an affordable flagship from OnePlus.