OnePlus sold around 1.5 million One units in one year of availability

The OnePlus One was officially unveiled in April 2014, but the device only started shipping to customers in late June. Since then, OnePlus has sold 1.5 million One units, the company’s Carl Pei told the Wall Street Journal in an interview.

Carl Pei, who co-founded OnePlus together with Pete Lau in 2013, offered a brief overview of the startup’s growth over the last 12 months. OnePlus now has over 900 employees from more than a dozen countries, sells its phone in 35 markets, and has two satellite offices in Singapore and Bangalore, with plans to open up shop in Europe and the US.

Back in January, OnePlus revealed it sold “almost a million” OnePlus Ones in its first six months of availability, and it looks like the company managed to keep a steady pace in 2015 as well. That was helped by the fact that OnePlus phased out its infamous invite system – the OnePlus One has been freely available since April, operated a $50 price cut, and extended the number of countries the One is available in, including the massive Indian market.

In the interview, Pei talks about the motivations that animate him, personally, as well as OnePlus as a whole and the challenges the company has been facing, but also about his personal life and his Uber- and Airbnb-powered lifestyle.

As for the OnePlus 2, there is no new information in the interview, so we’ll have to wait for the official unveiling on July 27. There are some hints about the philosophy behind it though:

In the beginning you focus on your flagship phone and the early adopters. What do they want? They want everything. The OnePlus 2 has everything. We don’t want to compromise on anything.

Even if we don’t have the best specs, it doesn’t mean we aren’t delivering a good product to our users. Specs shouldn’t be the thing that users worry about. They just need to think about whether they like using this product.

OnePlus hopes it will sell 3-5 million smartphones in 2015, though that seems like a very ambitious target, considering it managed to move 500,000 units in the first half of the year. The pressure is on for the OnePlus 2 to be a success, especially now that OnePlus can no longer rely on Cyanogen for its software. On the flip side, an improved distribution network, a better grasp of the demand, and a third smartphone model, expected later this year, could help OnePlus meet its target.

The first images of the OnePlus 2 just leaked through China’s TENAA database, while known specs include a Snapdragon 810 processor, 4GB of RAM, USB Type-C, and a fingerprint scanner. For more on OnePlus 2, check out our rumor roundup!