OnePlus appears to be in trouble. After some pretty thorough research, it seems that OnePlus is starting to circle the drain. We’ve seen other companies exit the smartphone market – notably HTC, LG, and most recently, ASUS. And now, OnePlus could be next.
OnePlus has already responded to this report and says that “OnePlus North America continues to operate, with full guarantee of users’ after-sales support, software updates, and rights commitments.“
This tells us that our report is likely accurate, but they also don’t want to freak out their customers. Saying it’s business as usual, and we never said that wasn’t the case. So what exactly is happening at OnePlus? Let’s go through the timeline.
Earlier this month, OPPO announced that it was folding realme back into its parent company. Essentially, being its second sub-brand alongside OnePlus. This was announced on January 7, likely to try to bury the news, as it was during CES.
Then, a week later, a rumor surfaced claiming that the OnePlus Open 2 and 15s were both cancelled. OnePlus had stated last year that they were not planning to release a foldable this year (meaning in 2025), but many were hoping for an Open 2 in 2026, perhaps based on the OPPO Find N6. But that’s not happening.
Then, the very next day, OnePlus CEO and co-founder, Pete Lau, is indicted in Taiwan. Taiwan indicted the executive over illegal hires.
So, already a ton of news about OnePlus, that’s not exactly great, and also shows that there’s about to be a strategic shift. Through extensive research and information from a source that we’ve used in the past and has been accurate, we learned that OnePlus might cease operations in some regions.
OnePlus is likely to pull out of some markets
We’ve been able to verify through sources that OPPO intends to phase out the OnePlus brand globally and will prioritize realme instead. This we have already seen show its head, with the OnePlus 15 and realme GT8 Pro launch late last year. OPPO has already begun canceling the OnePlus 2026 product lineup and has plans to exit the North American and European markets later this year. With some Asian markets also being on the chopping block.
In North America, OnePlus has about 10 employees, with a similar headcount in Europe. The company has already laid off its R&D teams in India and has begun asking key individuals across all regions to transition to OPPO or realme if they want to remain with the company.
OPPO is looking to lean out its portfolio due to the rising costs of hardware and OnePlus’ declining market share. Once these moves are completed, the current acting realme CEO, Sky Li, will head up the new entity. Which includes realme being an online-focused brand, and OPPO being offline-focused.
Currently, one Nord device is set to launch in India real soon. It’s unclear right now if that will be the Nord 6 or the Nord CE6. Though given recent leaks about the Nord 6 running the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4, that does seem to be the likely candidate. OPPO does plan to expand the OnePlus Ace series in China, however.
OnePlus declining market share in key markets
Let’s start by looking at OnePlus market share in its most important market – India. Below, this data comes from IDC, which shows the Indian smartphone market from 2024 vs 2023, and also Q3 2025 vs Q3 2024. The full-year data for 2025 is not out quite yet, so this is the most up-to-date info we have.
Looking at the 2025 report, OnePlus lost 30.5% of its market share year-over-year. That is a huge change, and it looks like Apple and vivo benefited the most. iQOO and Poco also saw huge drops. When you compare 2024 to 2023, there’s a similar drop for OnePlus, 32.6%. This also shows us that the latest market share for OnePlus in India is just 2.4%. Now that might sound like a lot given how large India is, but you have to keep in mind that the cheaper phones sell much better there than flagships. Meaning less profit.
It’s apparently not much better in China, where OnePlus has apparently 1.6% market share. This, we were not able to verify this. As companies like IDC do not break out the brands for China as much as they do for India (only top 5 in China vs top 10 in India). But 74% of OnePlus shipments are for China and India. And with India crumbling for them, that shows how few units OnePlus is shipping.
OnePlus President Li Jie set a public goal for the company in January 2024. This goal was to surpass Xiaomi’s 3% market share in China. Not all of Xiaomi’s sub-brands are just Xiaomi. OnePlus currently has a 1.6% market share, which means the company failed at that goal. Later in 2024, Lie Jie told the press that the 2024 sales were “basically flat”.
A report from TechInsights in 2024 cited “weak demand in North America and Western Europe” as the primary reason for OnePlus’ market share decline.
Shipping and selling fewer units means less revenue. Which eventually means you need to cut staff. And that’s exactly what OnePlus has started to do.
Layoffs have already started
Did you know OnePlus had a headquarters in Dallas, Texas? Well, they did, until it closed in March 2024. Currently, OnePlus has a small number of employees working out of an office in Palo Alto, California. As mentioned earlier in this report, that number is now around 10.
Europe’s layoffs started even earlier, with many cuts across teams in France, Germany, and the UK in 2020. OnePlus went from around 60 employees in that region to fewer than 10. A big hit for OnePlus was the German ban in 2022 (and a second ban in 2024, just months after the first one lifted). This ban was due to the patent infringement case brought up by Nokia against both OnePlus and OPPO.
Moving on to India. OnePlus had planned to open its largest R&D center in India and employ 1,500 people by 2022. However, that did not happen. According to data pulled from Tracxn, only 116 employees were employed at that R&D center by 2024. An employee wrote on Glassdoor that “Chinese management has no trust in India R&D”.
Additional Layoffs coming for marketing, sales, and comms teams
Going back to our source, we also learned that OnePlus has plans to “layoff the entire marketing, sales, and comms teams from India and other regions, including North America, towards the second half of the year.”
We were also informed by this source that OnePlus has laid off its entire India R&D team, and is “issuing memos to certain employees to either part ways with the brand or be a part of the new team that will be created post the realme-OPPO merger.”
OPPO pledged $14 billion to save OnePlus in 2022
In December 2022, OPPO publicly pledged $14 billion to save OnePlus. The parent company opened its retail stores to OnePlus customers, gave OnePlus access to its service centers, and let OnePlus sell phones with nearly zero profit margins. Essentially, sell units now, get that market share up, and they’ll figure out the profit later – basically the game plan for the OnePlus One.
This came nearly a year after OPPO and OnePlus announced they were “merging”, which seemed odd since everyone already knew that OnePlus was OPPO’s sister brand under BBK. Though BBK split up for regulatory reasons, OPPO is now owned by Guangdong Bu Bu Gao Electronics Industrial Corporation Ltd.
This cash injection wasn’t enough to save OnePlus. In 2024, OPPO grew 2.8%, while OnePlus declined by more than 20%.
Currently, OnePlus holds about 1.1% of global smartphone shipments. Which is not enough to sustain a brand that has its own marketing team, PR team, and its own service infrastructure.
So what’s next?
Well, as we just stated in that last section, the layoffs are apparently coming in the second half of the year. And likely towards the end of the year. Which means it’ll be business as usual – as OnePlus said in its statement to us. OnePlus, like ASUS, LG, and HTC, which have left the smartphone market, will also continue to support its devices. Remember, the OnePlus 15 gets four years of software updates and six years of security updates. So it’ll be supported until at least 2031. However, since OxygenOS is essentially ColorOS, that won’t be too hard to keep up with.
Will OnePlus cease to exist entirely? Probably not. My guess is that OnePlus will cease to exist in some smaller markets like the US – and that could also be due to the current political environment. While maintaining its operations in China and India. Though there was also a rumor earlier this week that the OnePlus 16 would be a China-only release. That source later deleted their tweet about it. But if everything we’ve learned is true, that definitely seems plausible.
If our source is correct, and they do have a good track record with us in the past, OnePlus, as we know it, will stick around for at least another six month
