Just last week, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau said in a forum that the company will continue to further integrate with Oppo but he did not elaborate on how this would work in practice. Leaker Evan Blass has now gotten his hands on a memo from OnePlus PR which explains the integration in simpler terms.
“With the integration, OnePlus becomes a brand within Oppo, however will continue to function as an independent entity,” reads the most pertinent answer. The memo also says that Lau’s role as chief product officer at Oppo will make him responsible for the product strategies of both Oppo and OnePlus.
This is not all that surprising as after the announcement of the integration, many compared the OnePlus and Oppo relationship to how Huawei and Honor used to work. The Verge had also reported last week that OnePlus will probably be treated as a label of Oppo. It will maintain independence and a separate consumer facing operation but with most of their business activities merging.
The memo goes on to say that,“With the merging of both the firms, we will have more resources at hand to create even better products. It will also allow us to be more efficient in our operations.” OnePlus and Oppo had already merged their R&D departments around the turn of the year, so the further integration is more to do with streamlining day-to-day business operations.
OnePlus customers however should not be too concerned by this as not much will change on the consumer front of things. All eyes will be on the next OnePlus and Oppo devices to see how close the similarities are going to be between the devices.
