Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus has made its first large announcement on sales of its first smartphone, the OnePlus One. The startup has made 500,000 sales since launch, most of which came from invites to purchase the device, not from actual sales in stores.

This is only the start for OnePlus, the company is claiming another 500,000 units will be sold before the end of the year. Speaking at the Web Summit in Dublin, co-founder Carl Pei said it should be easy for OnePlus One to achieve another half a million sales.

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Pei also revealed OnePlus One sales gain single-digit profits, meaning there are not adequate funds for research and development. The co-founder thinks that selling accessories could be a big part of their revenue and potential profit.

Earphones are the main accessories available for the OnePlus One right now, with the Silver Bullet and OnePlus x JBL E1+ both on sale in the store. There were meant to be bamboo back covers for the OnePlus One, but these were cancelled.

Software services are also being considered by OnePlus as one of their core profit areas, but they currently do not offer any interesting services for Android users. In time, however, OnePlus believes they can offer some interesting paid apps.

Pei sees OnePlus as a "social company" and wants to build a community willing to pay for accessories and customizations for their phone. This is sort of how Apple has managed to grow into such a large company, by making customers integrated with every aspect of the product, even the services and accessories.

OnePlus One will be available for pre-order again on Nov. 17 after pre-orders went offline a few days ago. OnePlus has always had an issue with supply and demand, lacking the units to ship to customers - this has made the invite system a necessary step, but OnePlus has had a few slip-ups in the past half a year.

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