Proud moment for India! Hyderabad to get world's biggest OnePlus store

India is a significant market for Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus and contributed a significant part of company's revenues last year. Now, the company is set to open its biggest store in India. While unveiling the latest generation of its smartphones - OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro on Tuesday, the company said that it will open a 16,000 sq ft store in Hyderabad. "This year, we are going to open three new experience stores ... We will open an experience store in Pune ... And Hyderabad which will be the biggest OnePlus store in the world (with 16,000 sq ft of space)," OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei said. The company already has experience centres in Bengaluru, Delhi and Chennai.

Later, the smartphone manufacturer also tweeted a few images showing how the store might look like. "We are excited to announce that we will be opening the biggest OnePlus store in the World later this year in Hyderabad.#OnePlus7SeriesLaunch," it tweeted along with the image. 

We are excited to announce that we will be opening the biggest OnePlus store in the World later this year in Hyderabad. #OnePlus7SeriesLaunch pic.twitter.com/oxFoKghgcc

— OnePlus India (@OnePlus_IN) May 14, 2019

OnePlus had started its operations in India through e-commerce platforms and its smartphones were only available online for a long time. A similar business model was followed by some its competitors like Xiaomi and Motorola which have also expanded to the offline route as well. Offline retail still accounts for a big chunk of phone sales in India. 

According to Counterpoint Research, Samsung had 44 per cent share of the premium smartphone (Rs 30,000 and above) market in India in the January-March 2019 quarter. OnePlus had 26 per cent share, while Apple had 19 per cent share in the said quarter. The category is expected to grow by 30 per cent this year in India, the report added. With the launch of its latest flagships, OnePlus is likely to gain the market share and might even change the rankings. Earlier, it had announced that India is set to become the "second home ground" for the Chinese smartphone maker.

In March this year, Samsung had unveiled three devices - Galaxy S10+, S10 and S10e - as part of its flagship Galaxy S series that was priced between Rs 55,900-1.18 lakh in India. The South Korean giant too remains confident of continuing its dominance in the premium category.