OnePlus, the ‘Flagship-Killer’ Smartphone Brand, Is All but Dead

But OnePlus’ exit comes at a time when smartphone shipments are showing steep declines due to the ongoing memory crisis—the lack of RAM, eaten up by data centers for the AI boom, has caused a global shortage. Research firm Counterpoint on Monday noted an 11 percent year-over-year decline in global smartphone shipments in the second quarter of 2026, the lowest level in that period in 13 years. Two companies saw growth—Apple and Samsung—whereas competitors like Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo saw the sharpest declines. (Vivo is a part of the same conglomerate, BBK Electronics, that owns Oppo, OnePlus, and Realme.)

Last year, at the onset of president Donald Trump’s tariff war, OnePlus dramatically increased the price of its then new smartwatch from $330 to $500. In May 2026, the company hiked prices on its latest phones in India. The company has been dealing with a massive loss of smartphone market share in the US for several years.

Nabila Popal, a senior research director of Consumer Devices at the International Data Corporation, says OnePlus was never a leader in the US. Still, the company’s sales took a nosedive after T-Mobile dropped its partnership in 2023.

OnePlus went from 1 million smartphone shipments in the US in 2019 to just under 130,000 device shipments in 2025—roughly a 90 percent volume drop over six years. Smartphones are primarily sold through carriers in the US, which means phone makers that aren’t available at carrier stores often have a hard time cracking the market. Popal says carriers drive as much as 66 percent of the volume in the US, at least based on 2025 data. T-Mobile declined to comment on the OnePlus news.

The US represented around 22 percent of OnePlus’ shipments in 2021, with similar numbers from Europe, and only 18 percent from China. But Popal says by 2025, the numbers flipped with 56 percent of OnePlus’s volume coming from China, which likely explains Oppo’s statement that OnePlus’ China product road map is not changing. If you add Asia Pacific, that number jumps to 91 percent—a huge jump from 51 percent in 2021.

“In 2018, with the OnePlus 6, they had launched what they were calling very proudly a ‘flagship killer’ at the price of $529, with flagship specs,” Popal says. “And then, rather than staying at that price point, they replicated the premium market—trying to increase prices—and that made them similar to the competition.”

Popal says it’s a strategy often set by companies with razor-thin margins. The initial goal is to grab interest, then go up in price, a method to break into the market and gradually increase profitability. “But unfortunately, certain brands are not able to command a price beyond a certain point,” she says. “It’s really only been Apple and Samsung that have been able to operate very successfully.”