Sales of the OnePlus One will be moderated by an invite system; you won’t be able to just head on over to the company’s website and order on a whim, but will have to be issued an invitation first.
OnePlus says that this decision is a compromise between delaying the start of sales altogether, forcing shoppers to place pre-orders and sit around twiddling their thumbs, and having shoppers scrambling to get an order in once a new batch becomes available. Instead, OnePlus will make invites available gradually, and once you get one you can place your order straight away, no pre-orders needed.
Invites will be made available through contests, on the OnePlus forums, and through “friends,” which sounds to us like OnePlus is going to make invites transferable between users. It hasn’t started distributing any just yet, and promises more news next week on launch day.
Honestly, we’re not quite sure how to feel about this just yet, it being such a novel approach to smartphone sales. On the one hand, this sounds like a careful, thoughtful way to bring control to what could otherwise be a big mess. That said, OnePlus has a lot to prove here, and forcing potential shoppers to jump through the hoops of acquiring an invite could easily dissuade them and send them off towards an easier-to-buy model.
It’s also worth nothing that we haven’t seen OnePlus describe this invite system as something temporary, just for initial sales while it gets its stock situation in order – this could well be here to stay
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