Reasons why OnePlus integrated with Oppo
A few months ago we got the news that OnePlus will be integrating with Oppo and the internet went bonkers. OnePlus which is one of few enthusiast brands which was loved by the masses and it had a huge community running for it. And as opposed to their motto “Never Settle”, they finally and truly settled when they announced they were officially being integrated with Oppo. Right?
I am an iOS user, and there was a time when I used to compare iPhones and OnePlus devices for my next smartphone. That was the community that OnePlus has. But did they settle? As a die hard community, YES. But as a tech company, a big fat NO. Why you ask? Let’s tech about that!
What is OnePlus?
OnePlus is Chinese consumer electronics company started in 2013 and co-founded by Carl Pei & Pete Lau. What many do not know is that it is a subsidiary of BBK Electronics – the owner of Oppo, Realme, Vivo, OnePlus and IQOO – and founded by businessman Duan Yongping.
The co-founders Carl Pei & Pete Lau are ex-Oppo employees who left the company in 2013 to start OnePlus. Their first product was the Cynogenmod based Android phone – OnePlus One. This device broke all the rules in the smartphone world at that time in 2014. The strategy was based on the lines of Nexus and Oppo i.e. selling exclusively online, without any marketing, giving the pure stock Android experience of Nexus, following an invite-system which kind of hyped the product.
With all these factors the OnePlus One was a smash hit. It was raved by consumers and critics alike which helped OnePlus arrive on the smartphone scene. This paved way for OnePlus to become one of the best smartphone brands in the world and the best enthusiast brand in the world.
Which brings us to……..
What is an enthusiast brand?
An enthusiast brand as the name says is a brand which listens to the consumers and enthusiasts. They try to offer all the things which the consumers want and they offer it at a fraction of the cost of the offerings from it’s rivals.
OnePlus started out as a true-blue enthusiast brand. It built a die-hard community and offered a smartphone experience which was unrivaled in the Android smartphone scene. They spent less on marketing often relying on word-of-mouth. They focused more on the core experience of Android with lesser profit margins to make the phones undercut the rivals. Often that meant offering phones half the price of flagships and they boasted themselves as “Flagship Killers”
Problem with enthusiast brands
The USP of enthusiast brands is their aggressive pricing vis-a-vis the feature set which they offer. But often times this comes at the cost of lower/negligible profit margins. And enthusiast or non-enthusiast, it all boils down to money. Enthusiast brands cannot sustain financially. Why you ask?
That is because the enthusiast community is a minority when compared to the whole consumer market. And when a brand only focuses on a minority, it often ends badly for that brand. Confused? Let’s look at a few brands:
Nextbit – Introduced a Cloud-first Android smartphone called Robin, and later got bought by Razer.
Pebble – Introduced an Android and iOS compatible smartwatch, and later got bought by Fitbit.
Cyanogenmod – An enthusiast and open-sourced Android based mobile OS, later discontinued due to corporate in-fighting and renamed to LineageOS.
Essential – Founded by Andy Rubin (Father of Android), once a unicorn, released an unsuccessful Android phone, then later got bought by none other than Carl Pei’s new company Nothing.
What is common with these brands? All of them started out with a unique vision. A goal to offer something fresh in a unique way. This stance gives them an initial leverage in terms of funding and a fan base. This in turn gives a good brand position as if they have arrived and at times it gives them resources to build patents. But in the long run, either that honeymoon period ends and they stop getting funds or they get bought by some tech behemoth.
And often times that buyout is only for lucrative patents and an established R&D team. So enthusiast brands after their initial success tend to fizzle out because they are only catering to a minority customer base. This means less than expected sales and revenue.
Conclusion
Now do you get why OnePlus integrated with Oppo? Yes! That is the only survival an enthusiast brand can have in the long run. Otherwise they have to keep on innovating which in turn requires funding. So it is a vicious cycle for them. So I think OnePlus did the right thing in integrating with Oppo, but that does not necessarily turn out to be a good thing for the enthusiast fan base.
Please share this post if you liked the content or comment if you did not like it. Either ways your feedback is important to us. Subscribe to Tech Turban.
