OnePlus is emerging as tough competitor to Samsung, Apple's high-end smartphones

OnePlus, which recently launched its latest smartphone OnePlus 3, may give tough competition to Samsung and Apple which are the reigning leaders of the high-end smartphone segment. The China-based smartphone company is expected to beat other emerging brands and may be one of the top three brands in the high-end price segment, a report by CyberMedia Research said.

This is primarily due to the attractive pricing of the OnePlus 3 (at Rs 27,999) and the specifications it offers at this price point. Some of the specification include Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, fingerprint scanner which can unlock the handset in 0.2 seconds, 6GB RAM, 64 GB inbuilt storage (32GB and 128 GB variants are also be available), a 16-megapixel rear camera, 8-megapixel front camera, a 5.5-inch 1080p AMOLED display screen and Gorilla Glass 4 protection.

Launched only recently, the OnePlus 3 has already garnered several good reviews, and coupled with its online-only business model and with a strong backing from the highly-active tech community, OnePlus has seen its organic growth being boosted.

The high-end segment in India refers to smartphones priced at or above Rs 20,000.

In 2015, Samsung and Apple increased their market share (in the price bracket of above Rs 20,000 price band) to 44% and 27.3%, respectively. OnePlus was the only emerging brand to make it to the list of top five in the same price point in 2015,the report said.

Although Samsung and Apple will continue to be formidable players in the high-end smartphone segment, they are likely to see more competition from the latest OnePlus 3 phone. Apart from OnePlus, they will see competition from other emerging brands too, such as Gionee, Huawei, Vivo and Lenovo.

In contrast, Sony, HTC and LG lost their market share in 2015.

The high-end segment is expected to grow by 19% in 2016 as against a growth of 15% in the previous year, says the report.

This is because more customers are upgrading to premium devices of top brands such as Samsung, Apple and OnePlus, it said. According to Faisal Kawoosa, Lead Analyst, Telecoms at CMR, “As we see smartphones becoming a necessity in India, the significance of high-end smartphones only amplifies for the reason that this many users would like to go for an upgrade from mid-levelsmartphone to a higher order smartphone.”