Here's why money can't buy you the new Chinese phone in town

Chinese smartphone start-up OnePlus launched its One smartphone in India on Tuesday, but the thing is that not everyone can get their hands on the device. It is a phone that people have been waiting for because of its brilliant hardware, geeky Cyanogenmod ROM and super aggressive pricing (Rs 21,999) but to get the phone you need an invite. Yes, you read that right, you need to be one of the privileged ones to get your hands on the phone.

The worst bit is that the phone will remain in a club of sorts for the time being. A person who is invited and has made a purchase can further invite others. So if I get an invite and make the purchase, I can invite three more people to buy the phone.

This is leading to a situation where people are stocking up invites so that they can invite the people they want to own the phone. How is this fair to the average consumer?

Of course, OnePlus is also allowing users to give out their email ID if they want to procure an invite, but getting an invite through that route is not a surety. This route is more like Russian roulette. In fact, like Xiaomi, OnePlus is bringing in limited units to India. Only 20,000 phones will be sold initially.

Initially, the invites will be offered to influencers or geeks. In fact, every person who attended the OnePlus event in Delhi received an invite to purchase the phone. Where does that leave the "aam aadmi"? It is only natural that these influencers (combination of journalists, bloggers, and OnePlus fans) will offer the invite to people known to them. There is nothing wrong in that, but the way OnePlus is abandoning the average person is not right.

A friend of mine who has the invite told me that he had given the invite to a colleague. However, I am still getting the invite because he doled out the invite on the condition that the three invites would be his after his colleague made the purchase. Again, there is nothing wrong in this.

That said, what if the majority of the crowd who got the invite did that? And either way, after a purchase the person gets three more invites. This way only the privileged ones get to distribute the invite.

Of course, Google did this recently with its Inbox app, but it was also quick at offering invites itself. It has done this earlier with the launch of Gmail almost a decade ago. But that’s software we are talking about. Hardware is limited; it should be offered in a more democratic way.

While Xiaomi was earlier criticised for its flash sale method of offering its products, it has increased production by leaps and bounds in a matter of four months and even offered the now defunct MI3 smartphone to people who never managed to purchase the phone thanks to its immense demand.