What Does the Oppo-OnePlus Merger Mean for the Consumers?

On June 18, 2021, OnePlus officially announced the Oppo-OnePlus merger. OnePlus has been the brand of the people for quite some time now. The company started off as a flagship killer with the tagline "Never Settle" in 2014.  Everything was going good for the company, it made the presence felt even in the Indian market with the OnePlus 1, OnePlus 2 up till the OnePlus 3T. The four phones captured the market like anything. There was another phone in the series OnePlus X, but it failed to leave a long-lasting mark on the audience.

The Rise of OnePlus

Ever since the company launched the OnePlus 5, the capital saw a major boost. The company had started earning a significant amount of money. On reaching a revenue of $300 million, the company started investing in marketing. The marketing was not low-key. The company made veteran Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan their brand ambassador.

Continuing with the trend, the company made Robert Downey Jr. the brand ambassador. The company also started doing a number of events like music festivals, gaming leagues and even sponsored multiple web series. All of this affected the price of the phones. The company was known to deliver a 50k user experience in a 20-25k smartphone. The prices slowly started moving upwards.

The Drawbacks

One major issue that the company faced was the lack of customer support infrastructure. Being a new company, OnePlus did not have very good customer support. Another major issue that rose was the change in the launching patterns of the phone. OnePlus was a brand that, like Apple, came out with a phone once a year. It would be their best offering and the R&D done throughout the year would reflect in that phone.  This changed with time and the company started launching multiple phones.

This resulted in the exhaustion of innovation, ground support and capital to invest in. India is a very price segment driven market unless you are Apple. However, if you are a Chinese company, then the price needs to be a defining factor of your phone. The prices of OnePlus phones kept rising, and they started drifting away from the affordability bracket.

Customer support was a major complaint that consumers had from OnePlus. The company could not attend to the need and queries of the customers in most of 2017 and 2018. This created a problem for the brand and the reputation kept getting affected. In the year 2019-20, the company got a little support from Oppo helping them bounce back. There was no offline or mainline hold of the brand, and black marketing in the name of the brand was very evident.

Why Oppo?

Oppo is a product of BBK Electronics, which is also the parent company of OnePlus. The major reason behind the Oppo-OnePlus merger is money. Oppo has more money than OnePlus, and this will help OnePlus better its overall infrastructure.

The second major reason behind this merger is that the offline channel of Oppo is very strong. There was a running joke in the country for a very long time that if someone zooms in on the satellite image of India, one would only see Oppo and Vivo hoardings. Oppo also realized that making phones that look like Apple would not take them very far ahead. Therefore, in the year 2018-19, the company started innovating. They came up with concepts like Super VOOC Charging, SuperZoom camera, etc.

How does this Affect the Consumer?

The first question that might cross the consumer mind will be, "Will OnePlus prices drop?" The answer to that is No. The prices of the OnePlus phones won't drop. However, the availability of the phones will increase. Even today, OnePlus phones are manufactured by Oppo. So after the merger, OnePlus phones will be probably available in Oppo offline stores as well. The customer support and service will also improve because Oppo has a wide offline network of service centres in the country.

These are the reasons and the outcomes of the Oppo-OnePlus merger. This looks like a good step, on paper. However, the actually implications and outcomes will be seen in the due course of time.