Tech companies often grab headlines for legal disputes. For example is Apple, which recently faced a lawsuit from Masimo over pulse oximetry technology in its smartwatches. This resulted in a sales ban on certain models until Apple removed the disputed tech. Likewise, BBK Group, home to brands like Oppo, OnePlus, Realme, and Vivo, had a patent disagreement with Nokia. In some countries, like Germany, smartphone sales from these companies were temporarily banned. Thankfully, the issue has been resolved, and OnePlus is back in the European market. Here are the details…

OnePlus Resumes European Market Presence

Nokia and BBK Group recently settled their dispute with a signed agreement. Nokia had sued Oppo, a BBK Group member, for allegedly infringing on its 5G technology patents. The court ruled in favor of Nokia, requiring BBK to pay licensing fees. BBK, finding the fees too high, stopped 5G smartphone sales in Germany. Despite an appeal, the appellate court sided with Nokia. Thankfully, the issues were resolved through a patent licensing agreement between the two companies.

Following this agreement, OnePlus, a part of the BBK brands, has re-entered the European market. Tipster Max Jambor discovered the OnePlus Open foldable for sale on the OnePlus Germany website, along with pre-order pages for the OnePlus 12 and OnePlus 12R. Meanwhile, Oppo and Vivo’s German websites still display a message stating that their products are currently unavailable in the market. Nonetheless, it’s anticipated that this will change soon, and sales for these brands will kick off.

The agreement led to substantial benefits for both companies. Nokia saw a boost in patent revenues, and Oppo, OnePlus, Realme, and Vivo set the stage for a return to the European market. Although Apple holds a dominant position in the US, its market share in the EU is 28%, meaning 72% of the population opts for Android. With half a billion people residing in the region, it stands as a crucial market. Prior to facing challenges with Nokia, BBK held a 20% share in the EU smartphone market. Now, there’s anticipation for a further increase in this market share.

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(via)

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We already know that Chinese smartphones brands OnePlus, Oppo, and Realme fall under BBK Electronics. However, it appears that this is now changing as the parent entity seems to be making is establishing each of these companies as completely individual.

OnePlus, Oppo, & Realme are technically no longer sibling brands

BBK announced recently that the three smartphone makers will now function completely as individual entities. Interestingly, this news move also arrives as the Indian Government is seeking to tighten the reins around Chinese tech giants. For those unaware, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence has accused various China based brands of various illegal business practices that include customs violations, money laundering, tax evasion, and more.

In the recent past, Oppo India was accused of evading customs duty that was worth a whopping 4,389 crores INR or roughly 531 million US Dollars. After this, the authorities freezing the bank accounts of Oppo that had 2,082 crore INR. This was a big blow to Oppo’s Indian operations and even BBK’s considering that it was responsible for the distribution of OnePlus and Realme branded products as well in the region.

So now, BBK Electronics are making the three companies completely individual, with each having their own legal companies. This includes OnePlus technology and Realme Mobile Telecommunications in India. BBK Electronics will now face lower risk to their business operations in the region in the region as each firms are technically separated from one another, while OnePlus and Realme are currently in search for new contract manufacturers as well as establishing their individual contracts with retailers and distributors.

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(Via)

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OnePlus had teased a OnePlus Warp Car back in 2019 as part of an April Fools joke. The car had promised stuff like a trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas on just a single 20-minute charge. It was a creative little prank back then, but a recent trademark application by the company indicates that it could soon turn into reality.

The Chinese company has applied for a Trademark Class 12 for the words “oneplus life”. A Trademark Class 12 pertains to vehicles, and the images shared by notable tipster Debayan Roy show that the application by OnePlus is for driverless cars, self-balancing electric scooters, remote control vehicles, civilian drones, and even boats.

#OnePlus, #Oppo & #Vivo applied trademark for their upcoming Electric Vehicles in India but it didn't register yet !

A Trademark is registered when you will see the word "Registered" on the marked section.

Yes Poco & Realme registered trademark for #EV

Check Red & marks pic.twitter.com/KIAnyS91hN

— Debayan Roy (Gadgetsdata) (@Gadgetsdata) November 2, 2021

The trademark application is dated 30th March 2021 but seems to have only been spotted now. It is joined by similar applications from OPPO and vivo, indicating that BBK Electronics and all of its subsidiaries are looking to make their entry into the EV space. The trademarks seem to have been rejected at the moment but the companies will likely be trying again.

realme had actually applied for the same more recently and managed to successfully grab a trademark for “realme TechLife and TL Device.”

The newfound interest of Chinese tech giants in electric vehicles doesn’t come as a surprise though. China has seen exponential growth in the EV space within the past couple of years and everyone wants a piece of the profit. Various brands from different fields have either invested in the market or brought forward products of their own. Xiaomi had officially registered an electric vehicle business recently and seems to be leading the race among smartphone companies.

India might not have seen growth figures akin to China yet but its potential is just as large. Companies are obviously aware of this, hence the trademark applications.

While the likes of a OnePlus Warp Car are still a distant dream, we might soon at least see e-bikes from BBK subsidiaries OnePlus, OPPO, and vivo. Xiaomi has already launched models of its own and its competitors were bound to follow.

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When Vivo announced the first iQOO smartphone in early 2019, it was marketed as the first phone under Vivo’s new gaming smartphone line. More than two years later, the iQOO line has gotten bigger and now includes mid-range and upper mid-range phones that don’t have the design we have come to associate with gaming smartphones. New info from China says that iQOO will become independent next year.

This should not be too surprising considering this is a common trend among Chinese manufacturers. Honor was originally Huawei‘s online brand targeted at a younger audience before it became an independent company. Redmi and POCO also started out as smartphone lines under Xiaomi before becoming independent in  2019 and 2020 respectively while Realme was under OPPO when it first began business a few years ago.

The info comes from the Weibo user @Arsenal who has a good track record when it comes to leaks. According to a post made earlier today, iQOO will become an independent brand in April 2022 which means it will now be another company owned by BBK.

Just like the other brands listed above, save for Honor, Vivo and iQOO should continue to share resources, though some departments such as sales may be separated. We may also see iQOO expand its product category to include other devices.

One question that arises from this new development is what exactly is BBK’s plan considering it just merged OPPO and OnePlus, the latter of which is a much bigger brand than iQOO. If it is merging some brands and separating others, there doesn’t seem to be a clear pattern regarding its mobile business. We hope more details surface soon.

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IDC has released its report on China’s wearable market for Q1 2020. According to it, Huawei led the market just like it did in smartphones. Apple and Garmin were the only non-Chinese companies performing well in the region. As a whole, the market shipped 17.62 million units, which translates to 11.3% YoY decline.

According to the report, the shipments of basic wearables that don’t have support for third-party apps (eg. fitness trackers) decreased by 5.5% YoY with 14.86 million units. On the other hand, the proper smartwatches (including adult and kids) also witnessed a whopping decline of 33.3% with only 2.76 million units.

The decrease in shipments is due to the COVID-19 pandemic but it also helped in the increased shipments of wireless earphones (26.5% YoY) and adult smartwatches (8.4%) as people are working as well as attending schools/colleges from their homes.

As per IDC, by the end of 2020, the overall wearable market of China will grow by 17.4% while wireless earphones and adult smartwatches will grow by 47.7% and 37.6% respectively.

China’s Top 5 Wearable Brands in Q1 2020

1. Huawei
2. Xiaomi
3. Apple
4. LifeSense
5. BBK Electronics

Huawei led the overall Chinese wearable market in Q1 2020 with shipments of 4.282 million units, which accounted for 24.3% market share. The company grew 18.8% YoY as its shipments and market share were 3.605 million and 18.1% at the same time last year (Q1 2019).

Xiaomi came a close second with 23.5% market share based on 4.144 million units of shipments. But it witnessed a decline of 0.6%. In the previous year, it led the market with 4.177 million units and 21.0% market share.

At the third position, Apple shipped 2.848 million units covering 16.2% of the market. The US tech giant grew 15.2% YoY from 12.4% market share and 2.473 million units.

The fourth position was occupied by LifeSense with 4.5% market share shipping 785K units. It was the only brand to show a huge increase in its market share by 72.9% YoY. For comparison, in Q1 2019, it only shipped 458K units and grabbed a mere 2.3% market share.

Lastly, the fifth place was held by BBK Electronics, which is known for its Okii XTC smartwatches for kids. It shipped 765K units down from 1.448 million units last year. It only accounted for 4.3% market share compared to last year’s 7.3%. In other words, it was the worst-performing of all the top brands with 47.1% YoY decline.

China’s Top 5 Adult Smartwatch Brands in Q1 2020

As adult smartwatch performed well in Q1 2020 in China, IDC also released a separate top 5 chart for it. Here’s a table to understand it better.

From the table, we can clearly see that Xiaomi and Huawei were the most successful brands in Q1 2020 with an increase of 189.5% and 111.9% YoY respectively. However, Huami’s market share plunged by 71.6% YoY making it the worst-performing top brands in the same period.

Non-Chinese brands like Apple and Garmin’s Jiaming made it to the top list but only the former showed an increase of 11.9% YoY, whereas the latter declined by 16.1% YoY.

UP NEXT: Global smartwatch shipments grew 20% in Q1 2020; Apple dominates the market

(Source)

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A few years back, most of those who know about Chinese smartphone makers OPPO and Vivo are probably living in China with the brand relatively unknown outside the shores. But today, the BBK brands are global players, even ranking among the top 5 smartphone makers in terms of shipment last year. Perhaps, the biggest upset the brand pulled last year was throwing Apple off the top 3 spots in the Chinese market in the third quarter of 2016.

Just in case you are wondering how the twin BBK companies coasting at almost the same pace, were able to achieve this feat, OPPO CEO Duan Yongping has revealed how. Duan is the founder of BBK Electronics under which OPPO and Vivo fall under and he is literally a recluse when it comes to granting press interviews. But the CEO recently granted an exclusive interview to US-based media outfit Bloomberg where he revealed how the company was able to throw Apple out of the top 3 standings last year, the first time Apple was recording a drop in iPhone shipments in China.

According to the BBK founder, OPPO and Vivo adopted tactics Apple was reluctant to employ such as releasing cheaper smartphones with modest to high-end features. There is no likelihood Apple will employ this sort of strategy in the near future as that could affect its sales in other markets, especially its lucrative market. By the way, Apple shares are still very strong despite the loss recorded last year.

Related: OPPO Edges Huawei to Top Q3 2016 Phone Sales in China, Vivo Comes Second

Further, Duan believes the US company is too stubborn sometimes, perhaps referring to its price regime. The Chinese market is currently getting flooded with high-end flagships with modest price tags but Apple iPhone prices are still going stronger, matching the price in the US and Europe. The 56-year-old electronics mogul is a fan of Apple, though, and even has shares in the US company. His revelation may be a little too early as we cannot say Apple is down and out until they release the next iPhone 8 and sales remains down in China. That is unlikely, considering the high-end features and premium design the iPhone 8 is said to come with.

(source)

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News emanating from Russia indicate that Chinese smartphone giants OPPO and Vivo would be plying their trade in the domestic Russian market soon. This was disclosed by Russian blog RBC which also revealed that the two Chinese brands would sell their phones in Russia in partnership with local carrier MTS.

RBC reports that the mobile carrier MTS is in talks with BBK Electronics which owns OPPO and Vivo. The blog claims the information has the confirmation of a source close to the Russian mobile telecom company but neither OPPO or Vivo’s representatives could confirm the news when contacted. However, this is an indication that BBK plans to continue expanding its frontiers in a bid to retain the top 5 spot the OPPO and Vivo brand presently occupy in the global ranking.

Russia has got a vast market and if the partnership works out, it could prove very lucrative for the Chinese giant. Perhaps launching in partnership with MTS would be a smart move which would help the brands sell their smartphones in Russia. It would be recalled that OPPO had made its foray into Russia in 2013 with the launch of the OPPO Find 9 followed by the release of some low-end models but after series of poor performances, the company had to close shop. But this time around, it is believed that if the company partners with a formidable local carrier like MTS they might get it right.

Related: Smartphone Fast Charging Speed Comparison: Huawei vs OPPO vs Vivo vs Samsung vs Apple

OPPO and Vivo won’t be the first Chinese brands to hit the Russian market, though. Already, Lenovo, Huawei, Meizu, ZTE and Xiaomi are popular brands in the domestic Russian market.

(source, via)

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Huawei‘s projection for the year is looking very realistic by the day, as the company has posted a rather improved result in its performance during the third quarter of this year, Gartner reports.

According to the report by research firm Gartner, the China-based tech giant still maintained its third position in the global smartphone sales ranking for the third quarter 2016. Apart from that, Huawei grabbed a large slice of the market share for Q3 2016 thereby closing in on Apple who still sits at the second position. However, Apple’s lead over Huawei has shrunk a great deal according to the report, with the difference in market share coming down to less than 3%. This is attributed to Huawei making in-roads into the high-end smartphone sales, spurred by model such as Honor which was a hot sell in top-end markets.

OPPO, another Chinese brand owned by BBK Electronics, also posted a very strong result during the third quarter. The company followed closely behind Huawei at number four in Gartner’s global ranking for the quarter under review. OPPO is closely followed by BBK Communication Equipment, another subsidiary of BBK Electronics.

Related: GFXBench Benchmark Test Reveals Huawei P10 Specs

Korean giant Samsung maintained its overall lead in global smartphone market share ranking for the third quarter but recorded a 14.2% loss in global market share when compared to the same period last year. Gartner posits that this was the worse ever posting by the company. The loss may be unconnected with the company’s botched Galaxy Note 7 which was predicted to amass a huge loss due to its withdrawal from the market over battery explosion related issues.

via

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You may have come across the company, BBK Electronics, in the past, as we have mentioned this name a couple of times in the past few years. The company is important to all Chinese smartphone lovers, as they are behind some of the most famous phone brands in the market right now, including OPPO, Vivo, and even OnePlus. So, if BBK is releasing a new smartphone brand, we can expect some pretty good products.

The company has just released a new brand called as “imoo”. This particular brand will be focused on making educational smartphones. This is not actually a new market for BBK, as the company has been involved with educational toys for kids for the past few years. So, the company is now bringing its experience in the educational segment and the smartphone segment together to make educational smartphones under the imoo brand. We are not entirely sure what to expect from these so-called educational smartphones, but more details are coming in the next few days.

The new brand imoo also released the first teaser for its device recently, which reveals some details about the phone. First of all, the brand is calling it as the “imoo learning phone” and it will be officially announced on June 24. Also, from the image, we can confirm that the phone comes with a slim form factor and metal frame with at least one color option, gold.

Another interesting thing we noted here was that the company said “imoo is coming” in English. Plus, there are a lot of words in English on the teaser image. Could we see some learning material from Chinese to Eng or vice versa on this phone? Maybe, we are just speculating too much based on limited information. Anyway, we should hear more about the phone this week. Stay tuned!

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