OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei today apologized to fans after admitting that the company “messed up the launch of the OnePlus 2.”

The apology comes after OnePlus failed to deliver on its promise of 30-50 times more invites for the OnePlus 2 at launch and only began shipping “meaningful quantities” of its latest smartphone this week — a month after it first went on sale.

“With the OnePlus 2, we made rosy plans. We were more confident, and prepared a lot more inventory,” Pei explained in a post on the OnePlus forum. “Yet, we only began shipping in meaningful quantities this week, nearly a month after our initial targeted shipping date.”

“You can talk all you want, but in the end, flawless execution speaks much louder than unfulfilled promises,” he added.

Pei admits that OnePlus messed up the launch of the OnePlus One as well, but it put that down to a lack of experience, and vowed it would not make the same mistakes a second time. But despite its efforts, it has been unable to deliver on promises it made for the OnePlus 2.

“Truth is, hardware is extremely hard,” Pei writes. “There are so many things to consider, like cash flow, inventory, supply chain and production. Every step of the way, there are landmines for the uninitiated and uncareful.”

Pei concedes OnePlus should have never made promises about how much stock would be available initially, and vows not to make more promises ahead of future launches. It will instead “focus on showing the world how we’ve improved through our actions.”

It’s unclear what the situation is right now regarding OnePlus 2 invites, but now that decent quantities of the device are shipping, the company will be able to work its way through its ever-expanding reservation list.

Pei has also promised that OnePlus will hold an open sale on the OnePlus 2 for one hour either later this month or in early October. “We will need to look into production and operations to determine when this is most feasible,” he adds. “We’ll keep you posted.”

With so many excellent smartphones hitting the market right now, you may decide not to wait for an invite, or that open sale. But if you do, you’ll be getting an incredible smartphone for the money.

• SourceOnePlus