Is OnePlus just another name marketing ploy from Oppo to gain an edge over the market?

When Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus launched OnePlus 5 earlier this year, a lot of eyebrows were raised. Not because the phone wasn't good enough, but the striking similarity in design with Oppo R11. 5 months later on Thursday, OnePlus launched an updated version of OnePlus 5, called the OnePlus 5T with a new design, and this time it looks exactly like the Oppo R11 S.

The connection between Oppo and OnePlus doesn't end with a similar design. Rather the ties between both company's go beyond R&D, manufacturing, and even sales, with both being owned by BBK electronics. This raises a serious question, is OnePlus just a marketing ploy by Oppo to sell more phones to the tech enthusiasts and in Western markets?

The enthusiast trap

Tech journalist Marton Barcza, the creator of ‘The Story Behind’ series on YouTube and a former Oppo employee, is a strong critic of new startups using and betraying its early tech enthusiast customers. He points out that the first stage of any enthusiastic brand entering the market will be by bringing something that is too good to be true. In this case, OnePlus came with OnePlus One 4 years ago with flagship specifications at a surprisingly low price.

For a company, this strategy known as evangelism or inbound marketing is effective in getting the attention of techie, early adopters. Additionally, the "word of mouth" publicity generated by the techie crowd does much good for the brand than any huge marketing campaign in its nascent stage. OnePlus cleverly used an invite system that only allowed people with an invite the ability to buy the OnePlus One in the initial stage.This created paucity of supply and made consumers yearn for a phone they couldn’t have.

Going back to 2013, Oppo was indeed an enthusiast brand, with spec focused and innovative devices, in which they weren't afraid to experiment, such as the Oppo N1 or phones like the Find 7.

By 2014, with the arrival of OnePlus One, something strange began to happen to the Oppo phones. Instead of making solid spec focused flagship devices, they started to make iPhone look-alikes, mid-range phones with inferior specs, that take amazing selfies. And it worked for them. In last few years, Oppo grew into the 4th largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, by essentially selling selfie phones. On the other hand, OnePlus successfully penetrated the high-end market in North America, Europe, and South Asia, where Oppo struggled.

What OnePlus was was able to achieve here is quite remarkable. Despite manufacturing stellar devices, Chinese manufacturers, whether it's Huawei, Xiaomi or Oppo, getting a foothold in North America is still a dream. OnePlus accomplished this with its band of tech enthusiasts and it's perfectly crafted narrative.

The crafted narrative of small company that never settles

Just before the launch of OnePlus 5, the company did a video with The Verge, in which most of the top executives kept narrating that they are a small independent company and it is unfeasible for them to bring features like bezel-less display. Which seemed like an advanced explanation for why OnePlus 5 failed to have any groundbreaking features, but still notably the phone was strikingly similar to Oppo R 11.

What’s strange is how did the company come up with a bezel-less screen in less than 5 months? Did they suddenly become a bigger company? Or that in 5 months the production of the cost came to such an affordable level?. In case of OnePlus 5 and Oppo R11, they both have the same design, display, dual camera system, and biometrics, and the only difference lies in internals and operating system with OnePlus having a better processor and having a more basic build of Android. And coming to R11S the story just repeated, this time with both the devices having the same bezel-less display.

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