Last year OnePlus CEO Pete Lau took up the Senior Vice President position at OPLUS – a company that wholly owns Oppo and has a majority stake in OnePlus (as well as a small stake in Realme). Lau was responsible for overseeing the product strategy of both OnePlus and Oppo. Several teams from both companies were joined together to “better streamline our operations and capitalize on additional shared resources”.
Now, months later, the positive effects of this move are clear and were deemed important enough to further integrate the two companies. However, Lau claims that the OnePlus brand will continue to operate independently.
“I’m confident that this change will be positive for our community and our users. With this deeper integration with OPPO, we will have more resources at hand to create even better products for you. It will also allow us to be more efficient, for example, bringing faster and more stable software updates for OnePlus users,” writes Lau.
Part of that has already happened – OnePlus 9 phones in China shipped with ColorOS as Oppo’s Android skin replaced HydrogenOS. OnePlus units sold globally do still come with OxygenOS though.
You can read the full post about the new direction for OnePlus and Oppo here.