OnePlus has announced its plans of opening a Research and Development (R&D) facility in Hyderabad, India. While operations at the facility will begin sometime in Q1 2019, the company also aims to make it the biggest OnePlus R&D centre globally in three years. According to OnePlus, the new research centre will play a crucial role in developing Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning for the company’s products. Additionally, users can expect a new Experience Store to open up in Hyderabad as, according to the company, it is one of the fastest growing markets for the OnePlus. OnePlus is also in the process of further expanding its offline presence in the city as there’s already a OnePlus Exclusive Service Centre in the city, and its products are available in retail outlets like Croma and Reliance Digital.
“In three years, we plan to grow the new R&D centre in Hyderabad into our biggest globally. We plan to re-focus our R&D efforts on a large scale and drive innovations in India for the global product, especially on the software side with special emphasis on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning,” Pete Lau, Founder and CEO of OnePlus stated in a press statement. The smartphone manufacturer states that it calculated several factors before choosing Hyderabad as the location for its R&D centre. The city being an active hub for startups is one of the primary reasons.
The new OnePlus R&D facility is said to play a crucial role for the company in its journey towards adopting the Indian market as its home ground. In a statement, OnePlus says that it is committed towards achieving long-term growth in the country and the new R&D centre is meant to aid the company in diving deeper into the ‘Make in India’ strategy. The new facility is also said to help provide job opportunities to fresh graduates as OnePlus initiates the campus hiring program at various universities this year, some of them being IIT Delhi and IIT Mumbai.
OnePlus last launched its OnePlus 6T (review) smartphone in India and it’s speculated to soon announced a McLaren Edition of the device. A report suggests that the upcoming device might feature 10GB RAM with 256GB of internal storage. The smartphone is expected to first launch in Woking, London on December 11, followed by an Indian launch in Mumbai on December 12. If the report is to be believed, OnePlus will join the fray of smartphone companies that have tied up with automobile manufacturers for releasing special edition of their devices. Huawei also did the same with its recently announced Huawei Mate 20 Porsche Edition phone, while Oppo has a Lamborghini Edition of its Find X smartphone.