One plus "low marriage" OPPO, invisible?

Image source @ Visual China

Text | The Tao always makes sense

On May 6, aliexpress exposed the details of the OnePlus Nord 2T, which retains the classic three-segment button design of OnePlus, with a straight screen in the upper left corner and three cameras in the rear. The news also said that the final price of the OnePlus Nord 2T is 399 US dollars (about 2655 yuan), and the machine may be officially released this month.

In addition, GSMarena reported that OnePlus has two flagships that have not yet been released this year, namely one plus 10 and one plus 10 Ultra.

Coupled with the OnePlus 10 Pro released in January and the OnePlus Ace released in April, it is expected that there will be at least 5 mobile phones in the city this year, which is different from the pace of the original two flagship machines in a year.

OnePlus' flagship series will continue to do, but it is no longer only a flagship, such as a digital blogger broke the news, one plus will launch more low-end models. Over the years, the route of "only building flagship machines" has allowed OnePlus to successfully establish an image of focusing on polishing products in the minds of consumers, which has also had a significant positive effect on OnePlus's reputation, but now the flagship and the mid-range are moving at the same time, and the positioning of OnePlus has changed.

Merged into OPPO, will OnePlus become invisible from small and beautiful?

01 OnePlus lost geeks

In January this year, the OnePlus 10 Pro launched by OnePlus can be said to have experienced a big "rollover", on the B station, many digital up owners released a review of this phone, which directly caused a group ridicule of the old users of one plus mobile phone. A user of one plus 7 Pro commented that one plus 10 Pro "three points configuration, seven points polishing, the remaining ninety points directly rotten", and advised consumers to "stay away from one plus".

"System spanning", "old users are not as good as dogs", "system updates do not matter"... Users' dissatisfaction with OnePlus completely exploded in addition to disappointment with one plus 10 Pro.

The reason is that, on the one hand, as the flagship products released by OnePlus this year, especially the Pro series, each company has always been accustomed to using the top match in core areas such as performance, image and sound quality, which is used to show their brand strength and enhance their image. However, at this conference, OnePlus began to focus on the mobile phone game experience for the first time, which seems to be inconsistent with the image of the all-round flagship mobile phone originally created by OnePlus.

On the other hand, mobile phone brands will take the digital series as their flagship product series, and set up three models of super cup, large cup and middle cup on the specific product, and the super cup of OnePlus is still so, so that users have no expectations for the flagship machine of OnePlus this year.

Last year, when Liu Zuohu officially announced the merger of OPPO and OnePlus, he publicly stated that OnePlus would continue to maintain independent operations and achieve company integration but brand integration, which can be seen from only one plus 10 Pro that OnePlus has gradually abandoned the original brand positioning and served OPPO's strategic adjustment. One obvious change is that OnePlus's products have shifted from small and beautiful to popular, focusing more on the needs of ordinary users rather than geek groups.

The active trajectory of geek users runs through the entire history of China's mobile phone development, especially internet mobile phones, which were first driven by this group of users who like to delve into electronic products. But as smartphones move to the masses, mobile phone brands no longer need to "please" geeks, and the weight of geeks in the hearts of mobile phone brands has also dropped a lot.

OnePlus was originally said to be the last "pure land" of geeks, but unfortunately, one plus, which became popular, was doomed to no longer attract geeks.

In fact, it is not only OnePlus that is abandoning the geek community, but also "abandoning" OnePlus. In recent years, geeks who are keen on electronic products have generally fallen into a dilemma, that is, mobile phone manufacturers have released more and more mobile phones, and the overall performance has become better and better, but there are fewer and fewer mobile phones that are suitable for their hearts.

"Mobile phone manufacturers are now too obsessed with creating 'bucket phones', want to do all the functions well, make up for the shortcomings, but the more so, the more the product has no characteristics," said a geek player, he also said that the current mobile phones look quite good, but if you pay for it, "definitely not buy."

The same is true for OnePlus, when the selling point of OnePlus's products shifted from the past "high brush" to "image", geeks are less willing to spend more money on functions they do not need.

02 Offline channels may not be able to "create miracles" for OnePlus

The benefits of one plus merging into OPPO are obvious, and the advantages of OPPO can be used to make up for the shortcomings. For example, the product, a new mobile phone recently launched by OnePlus, obviously makes up for the shortcomings of the product in the system, fast charging, and imaging, so that the product is more in line with the needs of the public; for example, the channel network laid by the blue-green factory offline has helped OPPO and VIVO open the sinking market in one fell swoop, and one plus's original offline after-sales service outlets are difficult to find, and now it can naturally use OPPO's huge offline network sales and promotion.

At present, OnePlus intends to shift from small and beautiful to popular, and offline channels have become the key to success, especially OnePlus will launch more low-end models, and whether these low-end models can bring sales miracles to OnePlus depends largely on offline channels.

On April 26, one plus Ace was first sold, according to the official release of the news, one plus Ace in the OPPO mall, Tmall and JD.com and other platforms won the mobile phone single product sales and sales "double champion", while offline sales compared with the previous new product growth rate of up to 257%.

It is unknown how much the OnePlus Ace can achieve, but the problem has been exposed, and we see that both OnePlus users and OPPO users seem to be buying this phone. An old user of OnePlus complained, "When the big hydrogen died, OnePlus still had a trace of soul left, and when ACE came out, it announced the complete death of OnePlus", and the dissatisfaction of OPPO users came from why OnePlus undertook the heavy responsibility of the ACE series, and the result was that the products created were not as good as the original ACE.

OnePlus merged into OPPO, in fact, did not catch up with the good time, the entire smartphone market replacement demand is accelerating the reduction, the era of channel king has long passed.

According to the data previously released by the Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in the first two months of this year, the shipment of mobile phones in the domestic market fell by 22.6% year-on-year, of which february shipments fell by 31.7% year-on-year, and the shipments of domestic brand mobile phones fell by 34.7% year-on-year. This is related to the elongated replacement cycle, the early mobile phone replacement cycle is about 16-18 months, followed by 20-24 months, and recently up to 36 months, that is, users generally change a new mobile phone for three years.

In the context of the growing replacement cycle, the only thing that can directly stimulate consumers' desire to buy is product innovation, but after one plus merged into OPPO, in order to cater to a wider user group, it has cut off some of the original product features, and gradually moved closer to the mainstream competition direction of other domestic mobile phones than taking pictures, charging, full screens, and game experiences.

This makes the differentiation of OnePlus no longer obvious in the comparison with other domestic mobile phones. In fact, starting from the OnePlus 7 series, although OnePlus found the differentiated selling point of the screen and took the lead in using a high refresh rate, but soon friends followed up, high brush has become the standard of high-end mobile phones, and the attractiveness of OnePlus to consumers has decreased a lot. And from the perspective of several mobile phones recently announced by OnePlus, regardless of appearance, hardware and software, the recognition of OnePlus is visible to the naked eye.

The negative emotions brought by the bottleneck of product innovation to the market are now difficult to make up for through channels, which even OPPO itself has not come up with a way, let alone give a direction to OnePlus.

03 Without Liu Zuohu's one plus, will it become an "outcast"?

Although OnePlus and OPPO are out of the same door and have been cooperating with each other, it is still difficult to escape the fate of an independent brand that has to be compromised after being acquired, and in less than a year, OnePlus's product layout, product positioning and product characteristics are being forced to change by OPPO.

For example, the biggest feature of the OnePlus software is the iconic hydrogen OS, when the OnePlus mobile phone was incorporated into OPPO, the official also specifically stated that the software features would be retained, but now the OnePlus mobile phone is used back to ColorOS; for example, the selling point of the OnePlus digital series flagship machine used to be the product tone highlighted by the appearance, system and texture, and now the OnePlus 10 Pro began to emphasize the game experience at the conference, and the main crowd is "young people who love to play games and chase performance".

We see that oppo "married" OnePlus into the door, and did not give OnePlus a time for integration and buffering, passed to the user level, and old users could not accept such a sudden change in OnePlus mobile phones.

Why is OPPO so urgent or unwilling to take into account the original tone of OnePlus?

In the final analysis, for OPPO, the strategic position of OnePlus is slightly embarrassing. On the whole, before taking down OnePlus, the company already owned OPPO and Realme, two smartphone brands with sales of nearly 100 million, compared with OnePlus's annual sales of less than ten million, which is not enough to bear the heavy responsibility of volume. At the same time, OnePlus cannot currently become the "vanguard" of OPPO's entry into the high-end market.

First, although OnePlus has a good reputation in the minds of some consumers and has established the image of focusing on polishing products, it has still not been able to successfully touch the high-end market; second, OPPO has handed over the breakthrough of the high-end market to its own Find product series.

OnePlus' strategic position within OPPO is also related to one person, that is, Liu Zuohu. Although Liu Zuohu did not successfully bring OnePlus into the ranks of mainstream domestic mobile phone brands, its innovative ability and dedication in products have been recognized by the market. But with the incorporation of OnePlus into OPPO, Liu Zuohu's energy was distracted.

In June last year, OPPO and OnePlus announced a full merger, Liu Zuohu officially returned to OPPO and worked on Find N, and Li Mingming, the former head of oppo China user operations, served as the president of OnePlus China. The purpose of OPPO personnel adjustment is very clear, let people who are good at products be responsible for product planning, let people who are good at operation be responsible for the operation of OnePlus, but the risk is also accompanied, Liu Zuohu no longer focuses on OnePlus, which directly leads to the serious collapse of OnePlus's recent products and the frustration of old users.

And the OnePlus 10 Pro came out early this year, but the other products of the OnePlus 10 series have not been traced for a long time, and this abnormal product rhythm seems to confirm the compromise attitude that OnePlus has to give in to OPPO's other product lines. For this change, Liu Zuohu may not be able to do anything.

Of course, one-plus operation has always been chicken ribs, OPPO will release its operational capabilities to one plus, and one-plus may also regain its growth vitality.

From independence to merger, standing on the entire market situation, OnePlus has found a good "backer" for its survival and development, so that this brand will not continue to fall in the position of "others". However, the crisis of OnePlus has not been completely lifted, and it needs to prove its value to OPPO, otherwise it may be marginalized and become an "outcast".