Oppo and OnePlus are companies both owned by popular Chinese conglomerate BKK Electronics. Last year, the two companies started to integrate some teams when Pete Lau took over product strategy for OnePlus and Oppo. It now seems like the companies are going to merge even further.
In a post on the OnePlus forum, CEO Pete Lau said that the company will further integrate their organisation with Oppo. This does not mean that the OnePlus brand is going away and he said that the company will continue to launch products, hold events and engage with customers.
“With this deeper integration with OPPO, we will have more resources at hand to create even better products for you,” Lau said in the post. “It will also allow us to be more efficient, for example, bringing faster and more stable software updates for OnePlus users.”
This is a partnership very reminiscent of what Huawei and Honor had as it seems that OnePlus is now an independent brand under Oppo. Most of the OnePlus products you see now are basically rehashed versions of Oppo’s flagships with different packaging and a different skin of Android. Merging them closer behind the scenes would only make their products more similar than before.
In the short term, this does not seem like it will bring much change for OnePlus customers but it is unclear what this merger could mean in the long run.
