Pete Lau departed from OPPO to form another smartphone company — OnePlus, which is also backed by BBK Electronics. As a founder and CEO of OnePlus, Pete Lau made the company into one of the most recognized smartphone brands in a short time.
Now, Pete Lau is said to be returning to OPPO but will keep his current role as OnePlus as well. While continuing to the Chief Executive Officer of OnePlus, Pete Lau will likely be joining OPPO as the Chief Product Experience Officer.
In this new role at OPPO, Pete Lau is said to be responsible for product planning as well as development. The news comes just months after it was announced that OPPO VP Shen Yiren announced his departure from the company, who was responsible for marketing.
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It will be interesting to see how this senior leadership reshuffle will shape the company given that both OnePlus and OPPO have very different strategies. While OnePlus is heavily focused on online retail, OPPO gaining its prominence through offline sales.
The reshuffle of the leadership also comes as the performance of OPPO is declining even though the brand is still among the leading smartphone companies globally. For instance, in Q1 2020, OPPO’s market share dipped 1% compared to the previous quarter and it declined by 3% compared to the same period last year.
Currently, OPPO is the fifth largest smartphone brand globally with a market share of 8%. In Q1 2020, the company managed to ship 22.3 million units of its smartphones, which is quite lower compared to 31.4 million units in Q4 2019.
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(Source)
