OnePlus has announced it is exiting the United States market, twelve years after launching its debut phone there in 2014. The move comes despite the brand's recent resurgence with well-reviewed devices such as the OnePlus 15 and OnePlus Open, and highlights how the company's cult-favourite, direct-to-consumer approach never translated into a workable model within America's carrier-dominated phone market.

The decline had been building for years: T-Mobile dropped OnePlus's flagship phones after 2022, keeping only the budget Nord line, while Verizon's partnership lasted just two years, from 2020 to 2021. OnePlus first reached a US carrier in 2018, by which point T-Mobile said nearly 200,000 customers were already using its phones on the network, though this remained far below Samsung and Apple, which accounted for around 90% of carrier phone sales in 2020. The article argues OnePlus's "flagship killer" pitch of high specs at low upfront cost was undermined by America's bill-credit purchasing model, which spreads the true cost of even premium phones over 24 to 36 months, eroding the value proposition that built the brand's loyal following.