After months of corporate smoke and denial, OnePlus looks ready to leg it from the US and Europe.
The dark satanic rumour mill has been manufacturing hell-on-earth yarns for months that OnePlus has been quietly winding itself down in some regions. Naturally, the outfit has denied it, while trying to keep the lights on and pretend everything is normal.
WinFuture reckons OnePlus will make it official this week and announce its exit from the US and EU. That might not shock anyone watching the stock vanish and the regional chatter get louder, but it is still a rough end for a brand people liked.
Existing customers will now be wondering what happens to their phones, warranties and software updates. Support will probably limp on for a while, but machines will vanish.
If the report is right, it means the end of a brand that lasted a little more than a decade. OnePlus arrived with plenty of noise, flogging phones that cost half as much as flagship rivals while offering much of the same swagger.
It tried a few things after that, with some decent wins and a few proper clangers. The biggest miss was failing to get its kit widely picked up by US wireless carriers.
There was a brief moment with T-Mobile, but it came and went fast. In the US, that carrier slot is often the difference between a phone people can buy and a phone nerds talk about online.
Oppo may now take the job and try to make something of it. OnePlus was never the scrappy startup it liked to pretend it was, since Oppo was behind the curtain from the start.
The Oppo name does not carry much weight in the US, but it is a much bigger deal across Asia. It has been making some tidy hardware in recent years, even if most US buyers would struggle to pick it out of a lineup.
If Oppo can bring some of those devices to the US, things could shift quickly. It still has to solve the same problem OnePlus never managed, which is getting through the carrier door.
Most people do not want to buy a phone with no physical presence in the US. Without its own shops, a phone maker needs carrier shelves, carrier support and the warm glow of someone else handling the awkward bits.
WinFuture says the retreat from the US and EU could be announced this week. For OnePlus, the “flagship killer” act may be ending with a clearance bin and a support page.
