OnePlus's death is bad. Oppo's refusal to replace it is worse

The choice of smartphones available in the US is already considerably smaller than in many other regions, and has now been made even smaller by the news OnePlus will no longer sell phones in both North America and Europe.

While this is obviously bad news, it gets worse because Oppo — a brand at its peak — isn’t stepping in to take over.

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I'll only accept a OnePlus exit on one condition, and it's a shake-up that makes sense

If there's only space for one brand, Oppo is the one I want in 2026

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By  Andy Boxall

What’s Oppo’s plan?

OnePlus is over. That's it

Oppo madę the announcement that OnePlus would no longer sell products in the US and Europe on July 17. While the brand’s fate elsewhere in the world isn’t so clear, we do know OnePlus as we know it is at an end.

When asked about whether the essence of OnePlus would be seen in Oppo phones or not, the answer was that OnePlus’s ‘good qualities’ would be carried over into Oppo devices, along with elements that have already been integrated, such as through OxygenOS and ColorOS blending into one.

This can be interpreted as the OnePlus name and its devices are essentially gone, at least in the US and Europe, and little to nothing will remain. Silver lining? It leaves Oppo with the right foundations and a rare opportunity to romance everyone disillusioned by Samsung, Google, and Apple.

It has the hardware to do it. The Oppo Find X9 Ultra is a fantastic camera phone, the Oppo Find N6 big-screen foldable is my favorite model of the year so far, and the OnePlus Watch 3 has some of the best battery life in a smartwatch, which is achieved in an innovative way.

Oppo’s strategic focus is apparently about putting the right device in front of the right people, in the right places. It undoubtedly has the right devices, and with a OnePlus-shaped hole in the US’s smartphone line-up, it has the right place too.

Yet, Oppo has no such plans at all.

OnePlus has left the door open

But Oppo's not going through

OnePlus was never a big industry player, but it had (has?) a dedicated fan base, and its devices were well-regarded, even after Oppo muscled in and turned OnePlus phones into OnePlus/Oppo hybrids.

There was a time when OnePlus phones could be purchased through a carrier in the US too. Various models, including the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 10 Pro were sold by T-Mobile.

OnePlus had the community, media praise, and tried its best to play the carrier game, which is widely accepted as the only way to have any chance of success in the US. Yet, it couldn’t quite make it work long-term.

Oppo is no small player. It holds fourth place in global smartphone shipments market share, according to Counterpoint Research’s data, and just a single percentage point behind third place company Xiaomi.

OnePlus has, at the very least, some public mindshare, it definitely has previous relationships with carriers, and is very familiar to the media. It has value. The industry and business machinations over the past few years just haven’t helped it flourish.

Oppo is now free of any pretense of keeping OnePlus going. It could aggressively leverage all that OnePlus goodwill to bring, and let's be honest here, its far superior devices to a region crying out for some competition.

It’s surprising not to see it counter the deflating news of OnePlus’s demise with some great news that it’s working on bringing a phone to the US in 2026. Instead, it’s avoiding any such activity, and in turn letting OnePlus and all its hard work getting into the US in the first place, get forgotten.

OnePlus couldn't crack the code

Oppo's not willing to even try

Oppo has the financial ability, device range, brand recognition (globally, at least), and perhaps most important of all, an opportunity to take OnePlus’s place in the US.

The fact it’s not doing so tells us all we need to know. It’s simply not worth it. OnePlus didn’t crack the code, and Oppo’s not going to throw more money at the situation, trying to do the same with the added pressure of introducing a new brand name.

Whether it’s public complacency, consumer laziness, carrier market control, political sentiment, trade restrictions or costs, brand snobbery, or a combination of all these things and more, a brand with Oppo’s clout has decided it’s not worth bothering to try and sell phones in the US.

I find Oppo’s decision not to replace OnePlus far more depressing than OnePlus leaving the US and Europe.

It’s not even about a lack of choice, or lessening the stranglehold Samsung and Apple have on the US smartphone world. It’s that there are fantastic phones from an established brand that are practically impossible for a lot of people to buy.

How unfair. A great brand making good phones will essentially disappear from the US, and the top brand closely involved in the move decides it’s not worth the time or money to try again.

Better hope the Samsung Galaxy S27 and Apple iPhone 18 will be decent, then.