The mix of OnePlus and Oppo has been going slowly for years. Now, however, businesses are essentially becoming an entity.
The OnePlus
Towards the end of last year, we published an opinion piece titled “The OnePlus Contradiction Worsens”. Basically, the article claimed that OnePlus is slowly transforming into Oppo. We mark the departure of co-founder Carl Pei and the introduction of a blatant rebranding of Oppo as important touchstones.
Now we have news from OnePlus CEO and co-founder Pete Lau that the company is entering a new phase which he has called “OnePlus 2.0”. However, I consider this to be a misnomer. From what Lau has told us so far, it’s not OnePlus 2.0, but “OppoPlus 1.0”.
Lau argues that Oxygen OS either exists by name only or is simply being replaced by an unnamed unified operating system that will land on OnePlus and Oppo phones. The engineering and development teams that were once individual at OnePlus and Oppo are now fully merged. Significantly, the only teams that haven’t merged are the PR teams, who will continue to work individually on their respective brands.
The writing is on the wall. In fact, he even made a short documentary about it. Under the headline “New Journey”, the article deals with the move of OnePlus employees to new offices shared with Oppo employees. It’s as depressing and boring as it sounds. a column in which an employee of OnePlus describes the beginnings of the brand as “dangerous” and admits that the identity no longer exists. It couldn’t be more blunt.
I’m sure Lau has reason to initiate this gigantic transition. Maybe OnePlus is not doing well enough financially. Maybe he thinks that getting rid of the “dangerous” aspects of the business will make it more successful in the long run. Or maybe it’s not really OnePlus, but more of a tactical change to bring Oppo into markets it can’t touch, like the United States.
Regardless, OnePlus and Oppo have always been connected, but different, although no longer.
The future is necessarily equality
As usual with OnePlus, there are many questions surrounding the reveal of OnePlus 2.0. We do not know the name of the unified operating system that will hybridize Oxygen OS and Color OS. Frustratingly, we also don’t know the full list of OnePlus / Oppo phones that will be getting this new OS. We don’t know what the deciding factors will be if a new device has an Oppo logo or a OnePlus logo. A lot of questions.
As mentioned above, we know that the Oppo / OnePlus teams have now merged (after unfortunately losing around 20% of the Oppo team). However, the only large team will have teams of small groups that will lead the development of new products. In other words, the team that will make the next Oppo phone might have a different group of people than the one that made the next OnePlus phone, even though they all belong to the same group and may even have a cross network. Lau seems very confident that this will lead to better products.
However, that seems to me to be a recipe for consistency. It’s not easy for a designer to internally juggle the subtle differences between a company’s products. It is inevitable that some aspects of any variation will go above and beyond. , it might not make much difference between an Oppo phone and a OnePlus phone, especially considering that the software is pretty much the same on both!
The bottom line here: Anyone who thinks OnePlus and Oppo have barely changed over the years hasn’t seen a thing: If the OnePlus clouding continues unabated, you’ll quickly see how different OnePlus is. it really was.