‘You will find more similarity between OnePlus and rival brands than Oppo phones’: Pete Lau

Bringing in more clarity on the future of OnePlus as it integrates with mother brand Oppo, founder and now Chief Product Officer of OPPO, Pete Lau, said he will focus on maintaining uniqueness of the two brands when it comes to design as they are “targeting different segments of consumers and need to be positioned precisely”.
Asked about concerns raised some consumers that some OnePlus and Oppo phones have started looking the same, Lau told indianexpress.com: “It is just that nowadays all eyes are on the two brands and people like comparing the products and find a lot of similarities. But, in fact, if you compare a OnePlus phone to a product from a competitor, you might find even more similarities.” He reiterated that as the person responsible for the products of the two brands he will strive to maintain their uniqueness.
In the conversation on the sidelines of the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the OnePlus management underlined that the focus for 2022 will be on performance and charging, especially the 150w SuperVooc protocol that will come to the brand’s phones in the second quarter of 2022 . The technology will be able to maintain 80 per cent charging capability of the 4,500mAh battery even after over 1600 charging cycles, the company claimed.

The company also announced that it will come up with its most affordable 5G phone aimed at the Indian market this year but refused to divulge more details.
In response to another question on whether the range of OnePlus products now will confuse customers, Lau clarified they now have more products because they want to cater to more consumer segments. “Now we are expanding the product lineup and also also thinking about how we can cater to more people with a more precise product positioning,” he said underlining that at OnePlus the belief was always that “less is better”.
In the call, OnePlus also announced that it was working with Google on “bringing new features into foldable devices” — Oppo recently launched its first foldable Find N, which OnePlus still does not have a phone in this new form factor. “We will co-work with Google in terms of improving the design here (foldable devices)… with all these efforts, we aim to have effective collaboration in terms of software features. In the future, you will actually see results come into the product” Lau said.