Das Leid der schwankenden Marktanteile von OPPO: Wohin geht es am nächsten Kreuzungspunkt?

Among the new mobile phones that have entered the market in the last one to two months, the Honor 400 series has attracted a lot of attention, while the OPPO Reno 14 seems rather quiet and even a bit left behind. However, in the eyes of Chen Mingyong, the founder of OPPO, the culture of "honesty and modesty" is a fundamental principle that was deeply ingrained in the company's DNA from the early days. Literally speaking, "honesty and modesty" means concentrating on work, not taking unnecessary detours, and not caring too much about attractiveness to the masses.

However, the business competition is changing rapidly. In the smartphone industry, where innovation efficiency and scalability are of crucial importance, OPPO is facing multi - layered challenges: The long - drawn - out path to premium segmentation has so far shown only limited success, mainly due to sudden price cuts. In the mid - and low - price segments, the competition is so fierce that every step forward is a challenge.

In the first quarter of 2025, OPPO's share of the foldable mobile phone market in Europe dropped by 63% compared to the previous year, which was particularly noticeable. OPPO has slipped from the third place to the seventh place.

The data from the three world - leading market analysis services, Counterpoint, IDC, and Canalys, point in the same direction: OPPO is one of the few brands among the top five manufacturers whose sales volume decreased in the first quarter of 2025. The decline in the global market ranges from 5% to 9%. In China, OPPO still has a market share of 15.7% and ranks third, but the strong rise of another brand presents a sharp contrast.

In the first quarter of 2023, OPPO was still the market leader in China with a share of 19.6%. Within two years, it has slipped from the first place to the fourth place. This decline not only reflects the pressure on a top Chinese brand but also depicts the persistent restructuring of the Chinese smartphone market. Many brands have completely changed in the last ten years.

From the "model flood" to the "hit specialty": The rules of market breakthrough have changed

The "model flood" strategy was a typical approach in the early days of the smartphone market when the market was still in the customer - cultivation phase. Even in the 4G era, the smartphone industry grew rapidly and reached its peak in 2017. For manufacturers, the annual product portfolio and the efficiency of market entry were crucial for their size, and thus for their competition and brand presence.

"Lenovo, Meizu, Gionee, HTC, Coolpad, Honor, Xiaomi... At that time, there were new stories about the fierce competition every day. Almost every day, representatives of different manufacturers came to our office. When it was particularly hectic, it was hard to tell who worked for which company," emphasized a man who has been working in the telecommunications industry for twenty years when he talked about the competition in the smartphone industry at that time.

OPPO has decided to focus on its core values and deepen market penetration in the lower segments. Between 2015 and 2025, it not only launched a large number of models in its main product lines such as the K - series, the A - series, the Reon - series (for the fashionable mid - end segment), and the Find - series (premium models), but also created sub - brands like OnePlus and realme, which led to one of the most extensive product portfolios in the industry.

"Many models, fast market entry, and good performance" - OPPO's early marketing strategy was precise and fast, which led to higher market penetration and a greater selection for consumers. This was the survival strategy in the early days of the smartphone industry. Compared with other brands that gradually lost their significance, OPPO bet early on fashionable and lightweight designs, caught up in hardware such as screens and cameras, and in software, and introduced technologies like VOOC fast charging and slogans like "Five minutes of charging, two hours of calling", which enabled it to rank among the top Chinese smartphone manufacturers.

After ten years, the competition mechanism in the smartphone industry has fundamentally changed from hardware to software. The market is saturated, the range of models is rich, and the annual sales volume has been between 280 and 300 million devices for years, which is almost half compared to earlier times when it was sometimes 400 to 500 million. At the same time, functions such as "games, photography, screen quality, battery performance" etc. have become the standard. What used to be a recipe for success has now become a burden.

In the face of the increasing uniformity and overcapacity in the performance of mid - and low - price smartphones, the competitive advantages that OPPO built in the early days through performance and design are gradually being eroded, and the competitive pressure is increasing.

Since some manufacturers are now also bringing premium technologies like "satellite communication" and "high - quality drop resistance" to the mid - range, OPPO is having difficulty standing out through the number of models. According to market data, OPPO was not at the top of the premium segment in 2024 and also lost market share in the mid - range segment.

"It's already difficult enough to develop a successful product. If you operate three product lines at the same time, it's a challenge to focus resources on research, development, and sales," said an expert from the telecommunications industry. Reality confirms this: OnePlus' market share has dropped from 2% in 2021 to 0.9% in 2024 and has almost become an insignificant player.

Even within its own product portfolio, there is increasing overlap in functions, equipment, and prices, which leads to internal competition. In contrast, automobile manufacturers like Geely and NIO in the electric vehicle industry have started to integrate their brands to increase efficiency. In the smartphone industry, it is questionable whether the "model flood" strategy is still competitive.

Two battles for the premium segment: The oligopolies hold firm

From the experience of the Chinese smartphone industry in the last ten years, it can be seen that to establish a presence in the premium segments, it is necessary to overcome two hurdles: core technologies and brand presence among consumers.

OPPO has achieved some success with its premium strategy in recent years. For example, the Find X8 series attracted a lot of attention at the end of 2024, and the sales volume in the first quarter after market entry increased by 66% compared to the previous series. This also increased the sales volume of OPPO models over 4,000 yuan in the fourth quarter by 32%. The Find X8 series also remained successful in the first quarter of 2025.

But this does not mean that OPPO has built an insurmountable barrier in the premium class. According to media reports, the prices of premium models in some channels dropped by several hundred yuan one to two months after market entry. The price volatility has affected the attractiveness of the premium models.

Many dealers say: "The technical data of OPPO's premium models are good, but the brand cannot justify the price premium. Some consumers would rather buy a used iPhone." In contrast, the prices of successful models of another brand are even increased by almost 1,000 yuan above the list price.

Behind the sudden price cuts lies the weakness in brand premium, which in turn is due to a lack of a leading technological position. This is the first major hurdle on the way to the premium segment. Apple has developed its own operating system in the last few decades and has thus taken an unbeatable position in the Chinese premium smartphone industry.

In 2023, OPPO surprisingly closed its own chip - design company Zeku and dissolved the development team. The investments of hundreds of millions of yuan in chip development were thus lost. The failure in self - developed chips has not only affected OPPO's competitive advantage but also questioned the strategic strength of the company.

People familiar with OPPO's end - customer market say that in the industry, self - developed chips and operating systems are regarded as symbols of the premium strategy. For example, Huawei has made a strong comeback in the Chinese premium smartphone industry with its own Kirin chip series and HarmonyOS.

"Self - developed chips enable manufacturers to integrate their knowledge of users and use cases into the chip architecture, which leads to better algorithm integration and higher computing power," said OnePlus CEO Li Jie.

Conversely, this also has an impact on the brand position. In the premium smartphone industry, brand presence among consumers is of crucial importance. If the technical data cannot be translated into a higher brand premium, the premium goal of the Find series remains unachieved.

According to the data for the Chinese premium smartphone market in 2024 published by Counterpoint, Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, vivo, and Honor are in the top five positions, while OPPO is in the sixth place. IDC data also shows that OPPO's market share of foldable smartphones lags far behind those of Huawei, Xiaomi, and other Chinese manufacturers, which underlines the weaknesses in the premium strategy.

New challenges due to the change in sales channels: The "husband - and - wife stores" are under pressure

Apart from the products, OPPO's rise story is also the story of market penetration in the lower segments. At its peak, hundreds of thousands of stores in rural areas of China represented OPPO. The "husband - and - wife stores", due to their low operating costs and flexible pricing policy, were an important part of OPPO's sales strategy.

But times are changing. As OPPO pushes into the premium segment, the strength of these sales channels is increasingly being questioned.

"In the industry, husband - and - wife stores tend to sell large quantities at low prices. This not only disrupts the manufacturers' pricing system but also affects the brand premium," said an expert. Nowadays, most consumers prefer to buy premium products in shopping malls. According to data from iResearch, the share of sales volume in large shopping centers is almost 30%, while the share of street and community stores is decreasing. Smartphones are a particularly prominent example of this trend.

Currently, OPPO is having difficulty marketing its premium models in some rural areas. Although Liu Bo, the former head of OPPO China, claimed in 2024 that 2,000 new stores had opened in shopping malls and the total number had increased to 6,500, the best locations in many cities are already occupied by other brands like Huawei and Apple.

Although OPPO's traditional husband - and - wife stores still benefit from manufacturers' rebates, their ability to generate new sales is increasingly limited. Some dealers have even given up. Not only OPPO but the entire smartphone industry has to think about the future of husband - and - wife stores.

From the parameter race to the AI race: The winner is not yet decided

Since OPPO gave up self - developed chips, it has focused on artificial intelligence (AI). At the beginning of 2024, it pooled its resources for AI research and development and founded an AI center. So far, it has already filed several thousand patent applications in this area and has integrated some results into its products. According to data from Tianyancha, OPPO invested in Waveform Intelligence, a startup for special AI models, at the end of last year.

The Find X7 series was the first product to reflect this technological shift. It was the first to implement a 7 - billion - parameter model on the device and enabled functions like AI phone notes and AI object removal. It is the first Chinese smartphone certified by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

At the developer conference in October of the same year, OPPO presented the ColorOS 15 operating system and introduced the "one - click question" function. It also proposed a three - stage development path for the AIOS (AI operating system): from "AI for the system" to "system for the AI" to "AI as the system".

With the Find X8 series, the AI ability was further improved. The "AI one - click quick notes" function can automatically capture the screen content and save it in the "Xiaobu Memory". These innovations brought OPPO to the top of the world in the $450 - to - $500 segment in 2024.

But OPPO is not the only one investing in AI. The race for the best AI solution is getting fiercer. Similar to the previous competition for the best screens, sun protection, or eye protection, vivo has proposed the idea of "AI reconstruction of the operating system", Honor has integrated an AI interface into MagicOS 9.0 and aims for "autonomous driving for smartphones". Even Apple has deeply integrated AI into Siri so that it can extract information from SMS and execute complex commands.