A popular Chinese company OnePlus, which was founded, among others, by Carl Pei, who today stands behind the brand Nothing, belongs together with other popular brands such as Oppo, Vivo or realme under the Chinese conglomerate BBK Electronics. Once a very popular brand, it came up with flagship killers, but now it's quite troubling, which is underlined by this year's largest smartphone exhibition in the world.
OnePlus and Mobile World Congress 2022
OnePlus 10 Pro, as the latest flagship smartphone of the OnePlus brand, was part of the current fair Mobile World Congress 2022 in Barcelona, Spain. OnePlus didn't have the biggest space here and if you were looking for them on the exhibition map, it would be in vain. They had a small stand right next to the one from Oppo, which is also the largest BBK brand. The flagship OnePlus 10 Pro was already there.
As you can see, the space for OnePlus was really minimal. OnePlus 2.0, thus, the magnificent announcement of the cooperation between OnePlus and Oppo is slowly but rather reminiscent of the integration of the brand under Oppo. And it was Oppo that introduced much more advanced innovations at its stand, such as the Find X5 Pro smartphone, 150 W charging or the 240 W charging concept, which of course surpassed OnePlus.
Smartphones for young people?
Despite its compact size, part of the Oppo stand has offered all OnePlus flagships since the brand's inception. These were models from OnePlus One (a famous model that could only be purchased by invitation) to OnePlus 9 Pro, and then the latest One Plus 10 Pro. However, the imaginary "killer of flagships" is now a thing of the past. Why is that so?
The first OnePlus devices really shook the technology industry, thanks in particular to the excellent price-performance ratio, to the proportions of the then flagships. He was revolutionary OnePlus 3T, which for the first time could be ordered directly from the OnePlus e-shop, as well as other later flagships such as OnePlus 5, OnePlus 7 Pro whether OnePlus 9 Pro.
The Oppo brand is large in terms of the active component under BBK Electronics, in terms of popularity among fans, however, OnePlus still leads significantly outside of China. Even on the US market, or even on community social networks such as Reddit. However, current steps suggest that Oppo wants to take the owner of these brands to a new level.
Realme like a rising star
The old adage, "numbers don't lie," applies especially to the sales of individual brands that fall under BBK Electronics. Despite the fact that only Oppo is in the top five of the world rankings, there is no need to be fooled. Because other BBK Electronics brands are already in sixth and seventh place in this global statistic of the largest smartphone manufacturers.
This is specifically about Vivo and realm, which is definitely not a negligible number of pieces of smartphones. For example, if we add up the shares of producers Oppo, I live a realme for 2021, we will reach a number greater than that of the Chinese competitor Xiaomi. On the contrary, OnePlus falls far below, in the category marked as "Other".
LG's position also speaks for itself. This South Korean manufacturer ended its operations in the smartphone market in the middle of 2021 and nevertheless recorded up to 1,53%. These figures therefore indicate that OnePlus achieved even less than 1,53% market share in the past year.
From the brands belonging to BBK Electronics Realme shines in particular, which somehow took over the role of affordable smartphones designed especially for the young and oldnamiusers. This brand releases one device after another. The incredible pace brings us, the end customers, not only new smartphones, but also tablets, laptops and true-wireless earphones.
At first glance, this may be a different strategy, which is more reminiscent of a competitor ecosystem of Xiaomi products. At its premiere, OnePlus started with a simple portfolio in the form of a single device, which was later supplemented by a new and cheaper series or original accessories from the manufacturer.
By comparison, OnePlus has been selling products since 2013, while young and successful realme only since 2018.
A mark on the edge of BBK Electronics' attention
However, OnePlus has one imaginary "ace up its sleeve". And it's specifically about availability and sales in the United States of America. Not even Oppo as the fifth largest manufacturer, it does not sell its smartphones here. OnePlus has thus gained a huge advantage in this market within the current portfolio of smartphones belonging to the BBK Electronics conglomerate.
However, on a global scale, this will not cause too much fuss. Manufacturers like LG, Motorola or even HTC they tried to break an extremely strong position Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), a Samsung smartphones in the local market, but none of them succeeded. Brand OnePlus tried to work with T-Mobile and Verizon, but that did not change.
The aforementioned Verizon no longer even sells OnePlus smartphones. This may also be the reason why the OnePlus scales with the most equipped premium products and rather focuses on the more affordable mid-range segment, in which it sees a gap, even in the US market. The dominance of Apple and Samsung smartphones is most pronounced in the case of flagship smartphones.
A manufacturer of mid - range smartphones without a premium model that could compete with smartphones such as Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra or Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max This year, he did not even win his own stand at the MWC 2022 trade fair. We in the newsroom are curious how this brand will continue to thrive, especially in the middle and upper middle class of products and under the wings of the manufacturer Oppo.
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