Since the SARS-CoV2 virus took hold on the world nearly everything in the tech world has been delayed and in the grand scheme of things that is a small price to pay for everyone’s safety. Now that some form of normality is returning to life in some places we are expecting all places to return to normal.
Unfortunately, although some governments would have you believe otherwise, the COVID-19 pandemic is still gripping the world with over 130,000 new cases and more than 5,000 reported deaths per day. This continues to strain some companies’ ability to deliver new tech products and the stable of manufacturers by BBK have been affected, largely in their Indian factories.
The companies falling under the BBK umbrella include OPPO, OnePlus, vivo and realme, all of which have decent shares of the Indian market. Unfortunately for them their Indian factories remain closed — all products for these companies are made at the OPPO Indian factories. All factories in India were closed early on and since then some have opened but a few positive cases at an OPPO factory caused a re-closing of them.
It is for this reason that the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro are yet to be released in full into India — there was a small release of a small amount of them recently but nowhere near enough to keep up with the demand.
There is a pent-up demand in the market right now. As the supply chains are disrupted at the moment, it is challenging for us to meet the full demand in the market currentlyRealme spokesperson
Of course BBK companies are not the only ones to feel this pain with others facing the same situation and as such the market is extremely stagnant — but remember at last count India has a population of 1,379,048,498 but have only performed 4,524,317 COVID-19 tests. It is unknown how far it has spread throughout India so to be honest the smartphone market is a minor detail in the life and death scenario many face in these times.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, production was temporarily halted earlier in May, and altered our sales plan. Having said that, production has already resumedOnePlus Spokesperson
Just when these companies will be able to start selling their new devices in any great volumes remains unclear with none of them able to commit to any particular time frame. You can be sure though that they will want to get them out as soon as possible and capitalise on the hype around each one before the next best thing comes along.
How is this relevant Australian market? They don’t even sell OnePlus here.