Smartphone giant OPPO has undergone a new round of strategic adjustments.

On July 17th, OPPO issued two consecutive announcements: Xu Qi, Vice President of realme, announced the suspension of new smartphone product iterations in the Chinese market to focus on overseas markets;

OnePlus decided to end product promotion in Europe and North America.

According to Sina Technology, OnePlus will primarily focus on developing the Chinese market, while maintaining product updates in the Indian market.

Viewed solely, this strategic adjustment can be seen as a significant internal restructuring, but when viewed over a longer period, it is also a continuation of the previous round of strategic adjustments.

In January of this year, realme returned to the OPPO system, and at the end of April, OPPO established a sub-series division.

Coupled with OnePlus, which returned in 2021, OPPO's sub-brands have all moved away from operating independently and have become part of a unified system.

Image source: AI

In the future, all three brands will enjoy updates to the ColorOS system, with OnePlus and realme products focusing on gaming and performance.

As the saying goes, there is no absolutely correct strategic template, only strategic layouts suitable for the present.

Can such a major strategic adjustment, with one core and two wings, resolve OPPO's brand management challenges?

01

Clearly Define Brand Roles

From OPPO's current announcements and previous adjustments, the internal brand landscape is as follows:

Firstly, in terms of internal structure, realme and OnePlus are both sub-brand divisions of OPPO;

Secondly, in terms of supply chain costs, the three brands share systems, hardware, and after-sales services;

Then, in terms of product direction and market, OPPO covers all price segments, while OnePlus and realme will focus on gaming and performance in their future products. OnePlus will be responsible for the domestic market, and realme for overseas markets.

After this adjustment, the roles of the three brands, especially the two sub-brands, have become clearer.

This time, the brand with the most significant change should be realme, as it has ceded the domestic market. What is the logic behind OnePlus focusing on the domestic market and realme on overseas markets?

realme's historical performance is not bad.

In August 2025, realme announced that its cumulative global product sales had exceeded 300 million units.

However, the difference between realme and OnePlus lies in the fact that realme's domestic market share has consistently failed to rise significantly.

According to Counterpoint data, realme's domestic market share reached 3% in 2021, but according to RD observations, it was only 1.3% in 2025; OnePlus, on the other hand, surpassed 3.3% for the first time at the end of last year.

Image source: Weibo screenshot

At the same time, realme and OnePlus sometimes have overlapping target user bases for their products.

More critically, this year's smartphone market is different from the past, which will amplify the issue of internal brand competition.

02

Market Contraction and Rising Storage Costs

Why does the market environment amplify internal brand competition?

From a global and domestic smartphone market perspective, there is significant pressure this year.

On July 14th, IDC released relevant data showing that global smartphone shipments in the second quarter of 2026 were 277.5 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 6.7%, marking the second consecutive quarter of year-on-year decline;

Meanwhile, China's smartphone market shipments were approximately 66.01 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 4.3%, marking the fifth consecutive quarter of year-on-year decline.

Market analysis suggests that the rising costs of core storage components have forced manufacturers to adjust terminal prices, further suppressing consumers' willingness to upgrade their devices.

In today's smartphone market, which is characterized by inventory competition, the demand for upgrades determines the sales lifeline of smartphone manufacturers.

Performance excess and a lack of significant functional updates have led many young people to delay their upgrade plans.

Recently, media reports have cited institutional survey data showing that the average user upgrade cycle continues to lengthen.

Counterpoint indicates that the average global smartphone user upgrade cycle exceeded 47 months in 2026.

Data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology shows that the average domestic smartphone user upgrade cycle reached 40.2 months in 2026.

In the second half of 2025, due to the surge in demand for AI servers, Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix shifted production capacity to manufacture HBM chips while raising prices for consumer-end DRAM and NAND by nearly double.

Even Apple's products could not withstand the price increases, and domestic smartphone manufacturers also raised prices collectively. New models even featured a "retro" 6+128GB configuration, with significantly reduced cost-effectiveness compared to last year.

Of course, under such market conditions, manufacturers have also shown differentiation.

IDC reported that in the second quarter of 2026, Apple and Samsung both saw year-on-year increases in global market shipments, at 3.8% and 3.2%, respectively.

Image source: IDC

According to media reports, in the domestic market, Huawei and Apple also dominate the high-end market.

This means that competition in the mid-to-low-end market will be even more fierce.

For example, if OnePlus and realme have overlapping products in the domestic market, they may end up competing against themselves.

The strategy of multiple brands vying for market share is no longer realistic. Reducing costs for sub-brands and waiting for future recovery is a more rational choice.

Therefore, OPPO's further adjustments to OnePlus and realme are imperative.

With OPPO as the flagship and OnePlus and realme focusing on cost-effectiveness and market segmentation, moving from independent operations to a "one core, two wings" model basically resolves internal competition issues.

03

OPPO's Six-Year Strategic Adjustment

Viewed over a longer period, OPPO's sub-brand strategic adjustments have spanned six years.

In 2019, the smartphone industry gradually reached the ceiling of its dividends, facing an uncertain future market.

It was in this environment that in 2020, Liu Zuohu returned to OPPO as Senior Vice President and Head of the Company's Product Line.

At the time, many media outlets speculated that changes in senior management would trigger changes in the two brands, and indeed:

In June 2021, OnePlus announced a comprehensive integration with OPPO, becoming an independent brand under OPPO, sharing R&D resources and supply chain advantages;

Subsequently, HydrogenOS for the domestic market was discontinued, which was referred to by many netizens as the "demise of HydrogenOS"; overseas, OnePlus also adopted OxygenOS, which is deeply customized based on ColorOS.

In December 2022, Liu Zuohu announced that OPPO was officially entering a dual-brand era, with OnePlus settle in OPPO's over 5,000 offline stores nationwide; OPPO planned to invest 10 billion yuan exclusively in OnePlus over the next three years, hoping to make it the leader in the online smartphone market for devices priced above 2,000 yuan.

Image source: Screenshot from a press conference video

Three years later, without mentioning OnePlus's performance, realme, which had Cumulative sales exceeding 300 million units, was instead integrated and adjusted.

In January 2026, realme also returned to OPPO, with Li Bingzhong serving as Senior Vice President of OPPO;

In April, OPPO merged OnePlus and realme to form a new sub-series division, with Li Bingzhong still overseeing the business of both sub-brands.

With the recent adjustments, the product positioning and sales scope of OPPO's three brands have become clearer, and they can also share R&D resources, supply chains, and sales and after-sales services.

However, some loyal realme users will have to rely on overseas purchases for new devices in the future.