Apple’s co-founder Steven Wozniak, who is affectionately nicknamed as Woz, will be the brand ambassador for the Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus in Asia, the company announced Tuesday.
Wozniak, also an electronics engineer, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs in 1976, is popular with tech enthusiasts who call themselves Wozniaks.
The new partnership with the 17-month-old OnePlus signaled an ambitious branding strategy for the up-and-coming Chinese smartphone start-up as it targets the higher-end market in Asia, especially Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The company’s One-series devices are already sold in 25 regions worldwide, with the flagship OnePlus One being launched in the U.S. this February. It did not reveal how many units it has sold so far.
“Since day one, we have prioritized design and user experience, and the values of the OnePlus founder team closely match with Mr. Wozniak,” said Liu Zuohuang, co-founder of OnePlus.
Under their partnership, OnePlus aims to double its yearly sales target to 10 million units by the end of next year, compared with the current target, which is 5 million units, according to an OnePlus statement on Tuesday.
The partnership will also let OnePlus foray into the Taiwanese market, where the manufacturer has been focusing on Hong Kong to serve the high-spending customers in Asia’s third-largest economy. Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs reported Tuesday that in the fourth quarter of 2014, the average spending for a smartphone in Taiwan hit 17,854 Taiwan dollars (about 586 U.S. dollars), while that in Hong Kong is over 20,000 Hong Kong dollars (about 2,615 U.S. dollars).
Wozniak will be introcuted in the company’s upcoming OnePlus 2, after he falls in love with the previous flagship OnePlus One, a younger generation of OnePlus co-founder Pete Lau told Xinhua in a written interview on Tuesday.
He will also design a version of OnePlus’ upcoming BT headphones, an accessory line for OnePlus. Terms of the partnership were not disclosed.
“We needed the best worthy replacements for the mechanical circuitry with exceptional sound quality,” said Lau. “Having Wozniak to review and tweak the product development process means he will breathe the magic into the headphones, helping us challenge the technical limitation inBluetooth headsets.”
An Android-powered smartphone from OnePlus will be priced at 1,999 yuan (about 325 U.S. dollars). Its previous flagship OnePlus One, which was launched in 2014, is currently priced at 2,999 yuan (about 485 U.S. dollars).
Both Wozniak and Lau stressed that for OnePlus, the price will be either 999 yuan (about 161 U.S. dollars) or a super-high price to reflect the premium products it hopes to bring globally.
“At any price, the core value of OnePlus will never change from what we have been doing,” he added. “We want to offer our customers with the most dreamed technology and the most beautiful design at three times of level — software, hardware and user experience.”
“Once people find they can’t live without OnePlus we suggest, it’s fine for us, although it may not be the case of most people, ever,” he said.
The third-year start-up did catch the attention of tech enthusiasts by killing previous technical barriers in the market with top-level innovation.
Its flagship OnePlus One boasts a premium color-OS program, plus high-tech with a 5.5-inch Full HD screen, and a 2.7 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor. It has pushed MediaTek, another top technologist in processor chips, on the brink with the pricing strategy.
As to the operating system, the flagship is running on Color OS, an Android-powered operating system developed by Oppo, which is OnePlus’ big shareholder. OnePlus attempted once to forge partnership with Google to put its smartphones on stock Android, but the partnership failed.
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Tags: technology, apple, oneplus,steven woizniak, co-founder, partnership, smartphone, asia, brand ambassador, electronics engineer,new strategy, sale target,design and user experience. The Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus announced Tuesday that Apple co-founder Steven Wozniak will be its brand ambassador in Asia. Under a new partnership, OnePlus aims to double its yearly sales target for 2016 to 10 million units, up from 5 million. OnePlus also revealed that the Apple designer will design a version of its upcoming BT headphones.
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