One Plus partners Foxconn to start manufacturing in India.

As it is looking at rapidly expanding into the Indian market, smartphone manufacturer OnePlus has partnered with contract manufacturer Foxconn to build its devices locally.

The Chinese company is experimenting with its new OnePlus X smartphones before manufacturing its entire product range out of India.

“We have a partnership with Foxconn for local manufacturing. We are going to have a deeper integration with them,” Pete Lau, founder and chief executive of the Shenzen-headquartered company told this newspaper. “Our goal is to have 90 per cent of the (OnePlus) devices sold in India be manufactured out of India by the end of 2017.”

Unlike most other Chinese brands, OnePlus was incorporated in December 2014 with prime focus on global markets such as the US, Europe and India. The phones made a debut in India about 14 months earlier, through e-commerce major Amazon, its exclusive partner for the region.

The company does not give sales data but the phones, mostly around Rs. 20,000, have seen good acceptance among Indians who look at premium products at a mid-range price.

ET