OnePlus might end up being an Oppo sub-brand
Last week, OnePlus announced that they would be further “integrating” with Oppo. As both companies are owned by the same parent company, BBK Electronics, it didn’t seem like a stretch of the imagination. OnePlus CEO Pete Lau also said that OnePlus would continue to operate independently, so it wasn’t exactly clear what this integration with each other meant.
Now thanks to leakster Evan Blass, he has managed to get his hands on an alleged internal memo that helps shed more light on the situation, one of which is how OnePlus is apparently going to be a sub-brand of Oppo moving forwards. This would be similar to Huawei and Honor, where prior to Huawei selling off Honor, the latter was a sub-brand and had their own lineup of phones.
https://twitter.com/evleaks/status/1405914905363034118
The memo does seem to iterate several times that OnePlus and Oppo will continue to remain operating separately from each other. This means that both companies will keep doing their thing, but will now benefit from the added resources of each other, like supply chain, R&D, manufacturing, and more.
It also states that they do not expect anything to change, at least for at this point in time. OnePlus had previously come forward to reassure users that OxygenOS is here to stay and that it will not be replaced by ColorOS, which is the Android UI that Oppo uses for their phones.