What Happened to OnePlus?

Hello

what

's going on? mkbhd welcome to 2021 so this is the

oneplus

one and this is the

oneplus

8 pro and the history of oneplus is really fascinating so when people ask me like in real life hey

what

phone do you use and I say it's a oneplus 8 pro the phone I use is called oneplus 8 pro the reaction is always one of two things: either they go completely blank and have never heard of oneplus and you have to tell them what oneplus is or they already know about and they also pull one out of their pocket and now maybe they've seen the reviews and they love it.

It has actually gotten to the point where it has become a defining characteristic of the oneplus brand. It's a very popular enthusiast smartphone brand where people really know. There's already talk about this in the community, but in the outside world they're still trying to get into this mainstream where everyone's heard of them, but there's this really cool Dark Knight quote that you might have heard about, where you either die. like a hero or you live long. enough to see you become the villain and Loki, that's a bit slow what has been happening to oneplus in the last few years, let me explain from the beginning and this is an important fact that you should keep in mind throughout this oneplus.

It is a brand owned and managed by a company called bbk electronics and that company also manages the oppo vivo and realme brands, so while all of these companies are considered independent and are managed and managed independently, they are also related as brothers, anyway, okay, the story of oneplus starts off pretty good, they are the new kid on the block, they are a new face and their first phone is a pretty massive success, it's oneplus and this phone, especially in the community enthusiasts, it catches turns on instantly, you know they can barely keep up with the orders, they have this wild invite-only purchasing system to get it in your hands and it's hard to get the phone right away and the reason why this phone is such a big success is because it is perfectly positioned as perhaps the original flagship killer, so it comes from a new upstart company that doesn't spend millions on marketing, they really listen to the comments and their forums and offer features that enthusiasts really want and They have an incredible price-performance ratio.

They partnered with cyanogenmod for the software for a custom almost stock Android experience. It was like an upgraded version of the Nexus 5. They didn't skimp on specs and performance and added features with software updates and were active within their community and it all comes from this young hungry upstart that feels like a startup that was the kind of energy that could support. I really liked this phone when it came out and I feel like if you're putting together a list of people like the best phones of the last decade, I think this has to be there, so oneplus as a company starts to build off of that right and there's a few failed marketing campaigns here and there, I suspect they are simply not very familiar with this new market. are working with them, but very quickly they came in and just carved out this identity as the new value for money enthusiast phone, but remember, remember that fact that I told you to keep in mind from the beginning of the video.

It's a new company, but it's not exactly a new company, remember they're a sub-brand along with vivo, oppo, and realme, so while a lot of their phones and their home style management are really fun if you've been paying attention on last. a couple of years down to some of their designs and even their older stuff, a lot of oneplus phones are also oppo phones, it all goes back to oneplus one coming out around the same time oppo finds seven, two different phones from two different companies, but related companies, so the hardware shares many pieces and most of the substantial difference is in the software, since Oppo aims at one market and OnePlus aims at another same idea with the OnePlus 5 and the Oppo are 11.

I mean , put them next to each other. and tell me that without the logo you could distinguish them a little after that, there was a oneplus 6t that looked very similar to the oppo r17 and even today you have the oneplus new nord n100 which is visually almost indistinguishable from oppo's a53 and even from some oppo technologies as Luke Charge is renamed and included in Oneplus phones as Dash Charging. Now none of this is bad, so how do I bring this up? Well, the Oneplus brand has been evolving before our eyes. Clearly, they started this company that was very focused. with one phone per year generating buzz with the most value for the lowest price and delving into enthusiast features and listening to users, forums and on social media, all that, but that is not sustainable on its own, the market of enthusiasts is a small fraction. of the entire market and while being the enthusiast favorite is great, they definitely want to take advantage of that status to be able to sell to the rest of the market, which is why we have seen many attempts to achieve this over the years, firstly, their The price of the flagship as you have seen has slowly increased year on year, so the oneplus one started at 299 when it first came out with flagship status and has slowly increased over the years until now, the oneplus 8 pro starts at 8.99 so they have them early. phones that started with one plus one one plus two one plus three, but they also tried phones like the oneplus last attempt, the north. which has become a whole line of budget phones in different regions at different low prices, now for enthusiasts this may seem disappointing as they are not as focused as before on this forceful phone per year to take down the giants they are now chasing to the mainstream, so there's a pretty new narrative in the headlines and comments that Oneplus is becoming something of an opponent with all these new phones coming out, but if you've been paying attention then you already know that. oneplus has been taking pages from oppo's playbook since the beginning and both companies, along with almost every other major smartphone company, want to eventually sell to as many people as possible, so there's a really great video of a fellow technological YouTuber who recommended it. it was old but gay before, but you should look at it according to the enthusiast brand theory and basically their theory is that there is almost no way that a enthusiast brand won't let you down eventually because there are only two paths to their future, or they will move. part of the enthusiasts and eventually try to sell to the rest of the world to the mainstream buyer, which is a bit disappointing, or they continue trying to appeal to the world's most fickle crowd which is also the smallest and eventually discover that that's not enough Well. maintain a business and they die and that is also quite disappointing, so the moral of the story today is don't be a fanatic, that is, don't become a fanatic of a company that may eventually betray you and disappoint you. of the products themselves, so if a company you like releases a bad product maybe it's time to consider other options, it sounds super simple because it is, but a lot of people don't have the same luxury;

People who work at Oneplus, for example, probably feel different about the company they work for today than when they started, especially if they have been working for the company for a long time. In fact, a lot of people from the early days of that company have left, so the Oneplus story has been pretty crazy, you know, on the one hand. It's pretty unusual to see, I mean, it's pretty rare and really refreshing that you see a new brand or a new face come in and disrupt things and shake things up a little bit, but on the other hand, you either die a hero. or live long enough to see you become the villain.

This is not to say that Oneplus is finished and that they will never make another good phone again and that they will turn evil. No, I actually think they've created a sort of DNA that will allow them to probably continue to make a lot of really good phones that I still use and I'm sure that will continue to happen, but I think if you're looking for the best bang for the buck or even the best phone brand more enthusiastic and focused smart, well, there are new shoes to fill, which will be a bit of a turning point at the moment, it seems to be a lot of red, a lot of little and probably some new brands that will emerge will also be there.

Anyway, that's all, thanks for watching and let me know if you enjoy these types of explainer videos like this. I had a lot of fun with them, so I hope you like to see them in the next one anyway.