A report from Chinese publication 36 Krypton now corroborated by other scoops by well-known leakers including Max Jambor and SnoopyTech indicates that Oppo and its sub-brand OnePlus are set to exit the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands smartphone market.
The plug on their smartphone operations in these regions will be removed in the middle of this year, however, they will retain small teams in the respective countries to oversee and handle basic operations.
Oppo claims that even though they can sell their products in these regions, the return on investment (ROI) is not as high, and as a result, their business is losing blood. Things have also been more complicated, with the rising inflation reducing the purchasing power of users in these countries, as well as the Russian-Ukrainian war making normal operations extremely difficult.
Looking at Counterpoint smartphone data for 2022, smartphone shipments in the European market dropped by 17% to only 176 million units, the lowest they have been since 2012. OPPO was particularly hard hit in Q4 2022 as their shipments decreased 39% year-on-year.
Aside from the tough business environment that arguably every smartphone manufacturer should be facing, Oppo is also embroiled in a legal battle with Nokia. Keep in mind though that this Nokia is the Finnish equipment supplier and not HMD Global, which currently makes Nokia-branded smartphones.
According to Nokia, Oppo and OnePlus have been using patented 5G technologies in their smartphones without paying for them. Nokia got a favourable ruling in Germany, prohibiting the sales of OPPO and OnePlus smartphones in the country until a solution to the issue is found.
Oppo and OnePlus could pay the patent fees to Nokia to use the technology, or they could drop the technology from their future smartphones, However, there will still be an issue regarding those phones that had already been sold. To make things worse, with Germany making this ruling, other European countries could soon follow, banning the sale of Oppo and OnePlus smartphones until their issues with Nokia are sorted.
With all these issues and the probability of being hit with hefty fines for not paying to use patented technology, Oppo and OnePlus might prefer to pull their services from the majority of the European market and instead focus on other regions like India, Africa, China and other Asian countries where their products are more popular
