After Xiaomi, OnePlus dives in to offline market in India; Tata Croma stores to start OnePlus 5 sale next week

Taking cue from Xiaomi's recent surge in offline smartphone market share, OnePlus has unveiled plans to offer its premium mobiles at brick-and-mortar stores in India.

The Chinese smartphone-maker OnePlus has tied up with the Tata-owned Croma retail store chain to set up "Experience Zones" so customers can touch and feel the devices to give them the confidence over the device's capability and build quality befire they make the purchase.

The phones will be available in 10 select tier-1 cities — including Hyderabad and Ahmedabad — and are expected to be available in other tier-2 and tier-3 towns in the coming months.

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The company has confirmed that it will sell OnePlus 5 in Croma stores from September 19. The phone was previously available only at OnePlus stores in Bengaluru and New Delhi.

This is the company's first ever strategy to tie up with retail chains globally, and this makes good business sense as the 60 percent of smartphones in India are sold offline. Rivals Oppo and Vivo are shining examples of offline distribution systems in India.

Xiaomi, which had focused more on online sale since its debut in India in 2013, had less than 5 percent offline sale volume in 2016. That number has now reached more than 30 percent, especially after Xiaomi opened exclusive Mi Home stores in May and roped in hundreds of retailers under the aegis of Mi Preferred Partners.

This, along with rising popularity of the Redmi Note 4  and the Redmi 4, apparently helped the company leapfrog rivals to become the second-biggest smartphone brand in the country. It was not even in the top five last year.

Now, OnePlus, which is said to generate 40 percent of its global revenue from India, is taking the same route as Xiaomi.

"India is a very important market for us. While we have seen immense success selling online, there is still an audience that wants to touch and feel the phone before buying it," PTI quoted Vikas Agarwal, general manager, OnePlus India, as saying.

"This is our foray into offline space but we see this more from an experience point of view. We had set up our own experience centre in Bengaluru and that has really pushed our sales up," he said.

OnePlus phones will also not remain online exclusive to Amazon India for long, as the company plans to sell them on Tata Cliq soon.

Also read: OnePlus 5's complete review

For those unaware, OnePlus 5 comes with top-of-the-line hardware, including 16MP+20MP dual camera setup with Sony sensors — developed in collaboration with world renowned DxOMark Mobile and the latest Snapdragon 835 octa-core — Qualcomm's most powerful and efficient processor yet. These are backed by sumptuous 8GB/6GB RAM and 64GB/128GB UFS v2.1 storage.

It also boast a 3,300mAh battery with game-changing Dash charging technology, which can power up the phone battery from nil to more than 50 percent in just 30 minutes.

Also read- OnePlus 5 vs OnePlus 3T: Is it worth the upgrade?

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Key specifications of OnePlus 5:

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