OPPO has its eyes on the top Android spot and so much more

The OPPO Find X3 Pro features a powerful camera system, premium design, and crisp display that boasts a color range of one billion hues. This is only one step in OPPO’s expansion into the high-end Android realm. While the competition intensifies among high-end flagship products, the Find X3 Pro raises the bar with its industry-leading and world-first end-to-end full-path 10-bit color management system.

See also: OPPO Find X3 Pro review

Establishing a high-end brand

However, the Find X3 Pro is just the latest development in OPPO’s larger journey to cement its credentials as a high-end brand. It has helped OPPO stake its place among smartphone brands’ top echelon by blending color technology and impressive, award-winning design that will set a standard as we journey through 2021.

But OPPO is not content to stop there. OPPO knows that great products alone are not enough to secure high-end brand status, so it has positioned itself for success through its R&D investment, cross-brand collaborations, and human-centric approach.

At the end of 2019, OPPO announced a $7 billion investment in R&D within the next three years. It has six research institutes worldwide and five R&D centers that work together to craft the next generation of devices. So far, these sites have successfully acquired more than 26,000 patents, and OPPO has accounted for a staggering 89% of all invention applications. More than 3,700 of said patents were based around 5G alone, so don’t expect OPPO to slow down any time soon.

See also: How OPPO’s Find X series has learned to innovate rather than imitate

It has already shown its strength with the OPPO 5G Landing Project, which brought 5G speeds to more than 80 global operators. The company is already leading the Android camp in terms of cloud service capabilities. It is the industry leader in fast charging technology, promising to charge a 4,000mAh battery in just 20 minutes with its new 125W charging.

The hotly anticipated OPPO X 2021 rollable phone demonstrates another significant leap. Using 122 individual new patents, OPPO’s X 2021 concept phone has an OLED display that smoothly expands from 6.7 inches to 7.4 inches.

OPPO’s ventures into new territories are all part of its commitment to leading the Internet of Experience. The new devices step beyond the Internet of Things, placing user experience above all else and working towards a seamless integration of life and technology.

Growing globally

With promising partnerships and innovation that puts people first, it’s not surprising that OPPO finished 2020 on a high note. It has built upon a strong foundation, moving more than 33 million units in the last quarter alone, the fourth most of any smartphone company.

In fact, OPPO’s strong 2020 helped it make strides by tripling its shipments in Western Europe and Japan to become the world’s fourth-largest phone maker. It has even claimed the top spot in China with its top market share to end the year.

One reason for OPPO’s global growth is its solid market deployment in Europe. OPPO has won the trust of supply chain partners, including Qualcomm, Google, and Sony, and operators like Vodafone, Orange, Deutsche Telekom, and Telefónica. Overall, OPPO has strategic partnerships with more than 70 operators and is developing cooperative partnerships with more than 40 5G providers worldwide.

When talking about the objectives, Scott Zhang, Overseas Business Lead for OPPO, said, “Achieving a certain number of product shipments and being active in a large number of markets has never been OPPO’s primary objective. By aiming to satisfy customer needs, creating quality products, and expanding in markets through the use of a ‘Glocal strategy,’ OPPO positions itself to naturally succeed wherever it operates.”

OPPO has publicly stated its aim to become one of the global top three smartphone brands in the next three to five years, particularly in the high-end smartphone market.

Winning partnerships

In collaboration with National Geographic, OPPO is aiming to fund $500,000 for the National Geographic Society’s Photo Ark Fund in support of protecting endangered species. It’s also co-creating a film series called Endangered Colours, produced by National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore on the OPPO Find X3 Pro and narrated by Oscar-winning actor Eddie Redmayne to raise awareness on saving endangered animals.

Grammy- and Academy Award-winning composer Hans Zimmer joined OPPO’s already impressive partnerships to provide extraordinary emotion to the Find X3 Pro’s global users with a theater-grade, custom ringtone. The collaboration between OPPO and Hans Zimmer represents a connection between human-centric innovation and spiritual sound with depth and emotion.

OPPO’s collaborations with other prestigious brands include Roland-Garros and the Rolex Paris Masters, in which OPPO has become the first Chinese premium partner of Roland-Garros. Part of the collaboration is to produce a series of videos featured on Roland-Garros’ official platforms, capturing the most dynamic moments on the court with OPPO smartphones. OPPO has also become the first Asian partner with Wimbledon. The company will support the competition season and provide opportunities for juniors to compete on grass courts to achieve the ultimate goal of becoming a Wimbledon tennis champion. Another notable collaboration features Automobili Lamborghini and OPPO’s Find X and Find X2 Pro.

These partnerships serve as a testament to what OPPO has built, how it has achieved recognition at the top end of the market, obtained a wide range of global recognitions, and how OPPO can achieve its ambition to become the top Android brand. We can only wait and see where it goes next.

Human-centric innovation

OPPO’s “Technology for Mankind, Kindness for the World” brand belief was unveiled in 2020. It places the human touch at the heart of every development process — from each perspective of product development and marketing communication — to bring users the key features they want while forging partnerships for the benefit of everyone.

Founder and CEO Tony Chen echoed many of these sentiments when he kicked off the year with his annual address.

The newest high-end flagship, the OPPO Find X3 Pro, is in on the action, boasting an incredibly customizable interface that makes it easy to tailor ColorOS to your own needs and make your life just a little easier. It exclusively features OPPO’s Colour Vision Enhancement, with 765 color correction solutions and an enhanced version of the Munsell 100 Hue Test to better understand the user’s specific color perception — a helpful addition for the one in 12 men and one in 200 women that suffer from color vision deficiency.

Besides integrating the Colour Vision Enhancement to assist populations with color vision deficiency, every pre-sale order of the OPPO Find X3 Pro helps fund the Reef Restoration Foundation in Australia. “Recolour the Reef” is OPPO’s latest app that shows a 3D render of coral networks that make up Australia’s Great Barrier Reef using AR. Working in association with the Reef Restoration Foundation, OPPO hopes the app will educate about the risks the reef faces, particularly concerning coral bleaching. The goal is to bring 1 million new corals to the Great Barrier Reef by 2026.

In addition, OPPO’s Enco headphones, together with Tencent Public Welfare and Beijing Love’s Decibel Public Welfare Foundation, formed an “inaudible band” to raise public welfare funds to upgrade cochlear implants for deaf and hard of hearing children.

OPPO has now firmly established itself as more than a smartphone company, with a huge ecosystem of technology partners, operators, device manufacturers, artists, and creators that build on its reputation as a trustworthy, human-centric brand by putting the user first.