OnePlus was founded by Pete Lau and Carl Pei on 16 December 2013 to develop a high-end flagship smartphone running Cyanogen OS that would come to be known as the OnePlus One. OnePlus would continue to release smartphones afterwards. In 2020, OnePlus released the OnePlus Nord, its first mid-range smartphone since the OnePlus X in 2015. Pei would oversee the design and marketing of OnePlus' products until his departure from the company in October 2020, going on to found the consumer electronics manufacturer Nothing OnePlus Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. was founded on 16 December 2013 by former Oppo vice-president Pete Lau and Carl Pei.[8] According to Chinese public records, OnePlus' only institutional Investor is Oppo Electronics.[4] Lau denied that OnePlus was a Subsidiary of Oppo and stated that Oppo Electronics and not Oppo Mobile (the phone manufacturer) is a major investor of OnePlus. Lau went on to state that they were "in talks with other investors",[9] although OnePlus has confirmed it uses Oppo's manufacturing line and shares part of the supply chain resources with Oppo.[10] Lau founded OnePlus with the intent to design a smartphone that would balance high-end quality with a lower price than other phones in its class, believing that users would "never settle" (a slogan that would come to be used by OnePlus in its marketing material) for the lower-quality devices produced by other companies. The name "OnePlus" originates from and encapsulates this same philosophy, with "1" representing the status quo and the "+" the desire to improve upon it, as well as the ambition to share good products with the world.[13][14] Lau also showed aspirations of being the "Muji of the tech industry", emphasizing its focus on high-quality products with simplistic, user-friendly designs.[11] Continuing Lau's association with the platform from the Oppo N1,[12] OnePlus entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with Cyanogen Inc. to base its products' Android distribution upon a variant of the popular custom ROM CyanogenMod and use its trademarks outside of China.[15][16] OnePlus would later develop a version of Android, known as OxygenOS, for use in its phones.
The OnePlus One was introduced on 23 April 2014 as OnePlus' first smartphone. It differed from its competitors—largely flagship devices from larger phone manufacturers, in its usage of CyanogenOS, its openness to developers, and its price-to-performance ratio in comparison to its hardware, although criticism was levied for technical issues. In order to reduce marketing costs, OnePlus relied instead on word of mouth and initially only allowed purchases via an invite system.[11] Throughout early 2014, OnePlus would continue to expand, hiring Chinese celebrity author Han Han to help market its products in mainland China and expanding its operations to the European Union in March of that year.[17][18] In December 2014, alongside the release of the OnePlus One in India exclusively through Amazon, OnePlus also announced plans to establish a presence in the country, with plans to open 25 official walk-in service centers across India.[19] OnePlus releases three lines of smartphones: its flagship "OnePlus" line, mid-range Ace line, which is exclusive for the Chinese market, and its budget-oriented Nord line. Both lines are equipped with an Android-based operating system known as OxygenOS or ColorOS.
As of 2024, 27 models in the OnePlus line have been produced, 8 smartphones in the Ace line, and 18 models in the Nord line have been released. Models currently in production include: