The chinese mobiles they are already a palpable reality in our country. The popular manufacturer Oppo has announced that it will soon arrive at Spain, which is undoubtedly good news for users to have a wide catalog of devices to choose from and not have to resort to Chinese websites as they did until just a few months ago to be able to buy the latest technological advances at the best price on the market.
Oppo arrives in Spain
And it is that if already last November we talked about the arrival of Xiaomi official physical stores in Spain, In addition to distribution agreements with the most important mobile telephony companies on the national scene, it is now targeting Oppo, the Chinese giant behind Living and even OnePlusTheir arrival strengthens the presence of Chinese manufacturers in Europe and in the Spanish market, which has become a key entrance door For many Asian brands, this is thanks to user interest in terminals with a good quality/price ratio.
Oppo is not an improvised manufacturer: we are talking about a company that has been positioning itself among the top for years. top sales positions in China and which has managed to grow in strategic regions such as India or Southeast Asia by relying on a mix of competitive price, very careful design and a clear commitment to the mobile photographyNow it's bringing that formula to Spain with a very clear focus on young users, but without forgetting those looking for a high-end mobile phone with cutting-edge features.
When does Oppo arrive in Spain?
Although for the moment the exact date It's not confirmed, but it will definitely happen sometime during the spring. As we can read in the newspaper Expansion with Ignatius of the Castle, in the next few days, representatives of the company will arrive in Madrid to begin testing contacts with distribution chains, in addition to starting to define the commercial and distribution strategy (and who knows if it will finally do the same as Xiaomi and open stores in the Spanish capital and in other parts of the national geography).
In this preliminary phase, Oppo is holding meetings with both specialized distributors As with mobile operatorsFollowing a model already successfully implemented in other countries: simultaneous presence in its own stores, department stores, local shops, and the catalogs of major telecom companies. This multi-channel coverage is key for a user to find a Oppo mobile phone financed through your carrier or free in the trusted store without having to resort to importing.
Now, the Oppo's arrival in Spain does not imply that OnePlus will be available, but models of the own OppoAlthough they share a parent company within the BBK group, each brand maintains its own identity. product identityits software and positioning, so Oppo will focus especially on photography, design and strong integration of artificial intelligence functions in camera, system and battery.
The best chinese mobiles They are an option to be taken into account more and more compared to other traditional manufacturers due to the technology they incorporate, since having a good mobile at a low price is fortunately synonymous with quality and guarantee. The tendency of having to look for a reliable Chinese website that would sell these smartphones is already beginning to disappear, because now everything is centralized in Spain and there is no need to resort to tricks to get them. latest technological developments.
Oppo It enjoys excellent sales in its country of origin, China, and reaching an agreement with Phone House and Amazon (for example), would mean entering fully to compete with brands both Chinese and other countries in Europe, so it is expected that over the next few months the market share of each of the manufacturers will vary substantially. We will be attentive to everything that happens in this regard.
What does it mean that Oppo is setting up shop here?
They have been sold for years Oppo mobile phones in Spain through import channels (mainly Chinese stores like AliExpress). As imported products, they lack Spanish guarantee and official technical service, which meant sending the phone abroad for any problem and accepting very long repair times.
When installed in Spain, Oppo smartphones comply with Spanish laws. You have a two-year warranty and local technical support in Spain.And Oppo phones will be sold in all stores, not just import stores, increasing the chances of Offers and discounts They are older. Furthermore, the brand will be able to organize local launch eventsCampaigns in Spanish media and specific agreements with stores and operators are essential to gain visibility against giants like Samsung, Apple or Xiaomi.
The 7 best Chinese mobile phones for under €300
A giant with many arms
Oppo It is an independent company belonging to BBK Group, one of the world's largest Chinese multinational consumer electronics companies.
BBK Group owns numerous technology companies, including OnePlus, the manufacturer of the recent OnePlus 6, and Vivo, another brand that also sells mobile phones in Spain. This conglomerate gives Oppo access to a very robust supply chainlarge-scale production capacity and a significant patent fund in fields such as photography, battery life, or artificial intelligence applied to mobile phones.
Oppo It's a brand used by several completely different and independent companies. For example Oppo Digital It manufactures DVD and Blu-ray players, headphones, and other audio and video devices. It operates as an American company and is headquartered in Mountain View, California, very close to Google's headquarters. Its players are among the most prestigious on the market.
Other different companies are Oppo Shop y Oppo Korea.
The division we are going to deal with is Oppo Electronics, focused on the manufacture of smartphones aimed at photography and young people.
Oppo Electronics
Oppo Electronics It was founded in 2004, and its headquarters are in Dongguan (China).
In recent years it has remained in the Top 2 companies that sell the most smartphones in Chinaand is currently one of the five largest manufacturers in the world (according to various statistics), behind Samsung, Apple, Huawei, and practically tied with Xiaomi. Its global sales volume is around hundreds of millions of units per yearwith a very significant international market share.
In Asia, especially in countries like India, Indonesia or VietnamOppo has a notable presence thanks to advertising campaigns with local ambassadorssports sponsorships and agreements with operators who have placed their phones in thousands of physical points of sale. From this solid base in Asia, the brand has launched a strategy of international expantion which includes the Middle East, Africa and, now, Europe.
What to look for when buying a Chinese mobile phone in 2018
Outside of Asia, Oppo's presence has been limited until now, beyond import channels. In Europe, it doesn't yet compete in volume with traditional brands, but its goal is repeat the growth which it has already achieved in other emerging markets and replicate the formula that has worked so well for it: a lot of investment in innovation, strategic alliances with key partners and a very aggressive quality/price ratio.
Youth, selfies, and artificial intelligence
What do Oppo mobile phones bring to the Spanish mobile phone market?
Oppo defines itself as a brand designed for young people, which specializes in smartphones that place great importance on camerasIn fact, Oppo has spent over a decade evolving the selfie camera and has pioneered technologies that are now standard, such as... Advanced Beauty Mode, the front sensors of high resolution or systems AI portrait capable of recognizing scenes and automatically optimizing parameters.
In 2012 he launched the Oppo Ulike2, the first mobile phone with Beauty Mode (filters and beautification of self-portraits), which is now offered by almost all manufacturers.
In 2013, the Oppo Find 7 was one of the first mobile phones to incorporate a very advanced front camera For its time, it was designed from the outset for high-quality selfies and video calls.
In 2016 it partnered with Sony to develop the IMX398 sensor, which is used in many high-end mobile phones.
In 2017, he presented the first dual camera with 5X zoom at MWC in Barcelona, and since then he has continued to collaborate with historic photography brands such as Hasselblad to improve the image processing and offer advanced capture modes, both for photos and videos.
Oppo has always sought revolutionary solutions to overcome the most common problems associated with smartphone cameras. For example, how to solve the limitation that the selfie camera always has lower resolution and quality than the rear camera? One of their answers was a motorized rotating camera which rotates to be used as a front or rear camera, as needed, as in the OPPO N3 (2014).
It has also innovated in terms of design with mobile phones like the Oppo Find X, which proposes a hidden motorized camera system to avoid the classic eyebrow o notch on the screen. The camera is hidden inside the chassis and only appears when taking a photo or unlocking the phone, allowing a front almost all screen and paving the way for future models that integrate even more features of Generative AI and smart assistants in the user's daily life.
The first two official mobile phones
The last 18 of July Oppo launched in Spain with its first two official mobile phones in our country. They are the Oppo R15 Pro and the Oppo A3.
El Oppo R15 Pro It's a smartphone focused on selfies. It's one of the brand's first models to integrate Dual camera with optimized artificial intelligenceThe rear camera has a 20+16 MP resolution, and it also includes a 20 MP front camera with an advanced beauty mode. Its artificial intelligence recognizes almost 300 stitches on the face and enhances them by applying changes based on age, gender, skin color, and texture. It also debuts a new system of 3D lighting that highlights the volume of faces in selfies.
El Oppo A3 It's a mobile phone with lighter hardware, equipped with an artificial intelligence module that studies how you use the phone to save battery, and another module to beautify selfies, detecting objects in photos and lighting them individually.
These are your technical characteristics:
Both the Oppo R15 Pro such as Oppo A3 They are now available in Spain at FNAC, MediaMarkt and El Corte Inglés stores.
El Price of the Oppo R15 Pro in Spain It's €649,90. Oppo A3 We can find it for €299,90.
Also announced, though without a date yet, is the Oppo Find XYou can find more information at this link: no date yet
The Oppo Find X replaces the iPhone X's notch.
The Oppo mobile range
The Oppo mobiles They are grouped into ranges headed by a letter: A, F, Find, N and R.
La range A It's their most generic range. General-purpose mobile phones for all types of users, with price content and balanced specifications.
La range F It focuses on selfies, with plenty of features and improvements to the front camera, advanced beauty modes, and tools designed for social media.
La Find range It fulfills specific functions, and each model has a different purpose. For example, the Oppo Find X It uses a motorized camera that hides the eyebrow of the screen when the camera is not in use. It is within this family that Oppo usually debuts its cutting-edge technologies in screen, processor, AI and photography.
La N range It only has two models, the N1 and the N3, which stand out for their rotary camera which can be used as a front or as a back.
Por último, la R range we can consider it the high end Oppo, with its more powerful hardware, but also at higher prices.
If you want to know the best models For each range, we have prepared this link:
The best Oppo phones by price range
coloros
The Oppo mobiles They carry their own layer of the operating system, called colorosIt's a very elegant interface, with a design somewhere between Android and iOS, where, naturally, great attention is paid to the photos and videointegrating quick access to camera, gallery, and editing tools powered by Artificial Intelligence.
The system apps have been redesigned to use the borderless screen of the latest Oppo models, including those that mimic the iPhone X's notch or do away with it altogether thanks to hidden cameras. ColorOS also incorporates advanced navigation gestures, and each new version strengthens integration with google services and with its own AI solutions, both in the launcher and in the settings.
Interestingly, ColorOS 5 It was ahead of Android 9 Pie in adopting the gestures to control all functions of the mobile phone. Since then, Oppo has maintained a strong commitment to gesture control, aesthetic customization, and performance optimization with algorithms that learn from the usage habits of user.
How to understand the Xiaomi mobile range
Information bubbles and notifications float about apps and games, so you can read or reject them without interrupting what you're doing. Artificial intelligence is used to find photos faster or create Memories. It's also used to detect duplicate or corrupted photos and recommend that you delete them to keep your memories safe. free space in storage.
As with consoles, it records in the background a video of your games While you play, to immortalize your best moments and then share them on social media. Furthermore, the latest iterations of ColorOS integrate generative AI features for summarize texts, helping with daily tasks, improving productivity and offering more contextual assistants, both in high-end mobiles and in families like Reno or A.
Oppo arrives in SpainAnd that can only mean great news for users, because competition always benefits us: more options, better prices, and a new brand ready to innovate in photography, design, and artificial intelligence within the ecosystem of chinese mobiles that are already successful in our country.
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It's official: After much speculation in recent months, Oppo has confirmed its arrival in Spain. “We are still working on the marketing strategy for Europe, but the opening of the office in Spain is already underway and negotiations with distribution channels are very advanced. So we could open by mid-year,” a brand representative reports. In this way, the world's fourth-largest mobile phone manufacturer—which has sold more than 112 million units Last year, according to Gartner— he returned to the old continent two years after leaving.
En 2016Oppo decided to close its European operations due to several problems, including distribution difficulties (it sold online), fears of patent litigation, and modest sales that didn't justify the significant resources required to exploit a market as complex as Europe. The Shenzhen-based company decided to withdraw and focus its efforts on the sector's cash cows: India and Southeast Asia.
“These are more homogeneous and populated developing markets that offer ample room for growth because they are not yet saturated, they are growing, and they have consumers who care about the quality-price ratio and who, in many cases, are acquiring their first smartphone,” he says. Katrina LiThe brand's head of internationalization, during a visit to Oppo's main factory in Dongguan. The factory also manufactures the devices of the other two brands belonging to the BBK conglomerate: OnePlus—whose strength lies in more developed markets—and Vivo—which shares the internationalization strategy of its older sibling.
The rapid adaptation afforded by having its own factories and the extremely aggressive marketing campaigns it has launched, with large investments in advertising and sponsorships throughout Asia, have yielded good results for the company: in India, the firm already has some 70.000 points of saleAnd during fiscal year 2017, its sales skyrocketed by 750% in the Asian giant's market, which was led for the first time by its closest competitor, Xiaomi; in Southeast Asia, where Oppo's billboards are ubiquitous, it already enjoys almost 17% market share. It has also expanded into the Middle East and Africa, and is now present in 31 countries.
With that newfound strength, the brand is now following in the footsteps of Xiaomi, which already has four official stores in Spain —three in Madrid and one in Barcelona—, confirming the interest of Chinese electronics manufacturers in Spain as part of their unstoppable internationalization process. Although perhaps the reasons for this interest are not particularly flattering. “It’s a country that straddles the line between developing and developed nations. The economic crisis has severely impacted the population’s purchasing power, making them more receptive to Chinese products than in other Western European countries, for whose market it serves as a good entry point,” explains a Chinese employee of a rival brand also present in Spain, who prefers to remain anonymous.
“His words are reflected in the rise of online parallel import businesses specializing in the sale of low-cost Chinese brand appliances. In fact, Spain is the second most important market for AliExpress Alibaba's international B2C branch is already present, and next week it will welcome another Chinese giant drawn to our market: JD.com, Alibaba's main rival and specializing in the sale of electronics. But this boom is also felt in traditional retail and in the ranking of the ten best-selling phones in our country last year: two are manufactured by Huawei, and Xiaomi secured a spot despite its arrival in Spain only last November. "There is still some misgiving about 'made in China,' but it disappears as soon as users try the products. It's a process that will intensify over time," predicts Li. At Xiaomi, CEO Lei Jun goes even further: "We are democratizing technology," he said during one of the brand's launches in Beijing.
Oppo's strategy for launch is the same as that of Xiaomi, Meizu, or Nubia: smartphones with high performance and attractive design at significantly lower prices than Apple, Samsung, or Sony. Although the brand hasn't confirmed it, it's possible they'll debut with the two latest models they've presented in Asia: the R15 and the F7. Both were launched last month, but the first — the company's flagship — was unveiled in China and the second, a mid-range phone, debuted in India.
They don't hide their similarities to the iPhone X and the Huawei P20, from which they adopt the notch and almost borderless screen, and everything points to them also being very similar to the upcoming OnePlus 6. But the brand defends itself against those who accuse it of copying. "Oppo has been a pioneer on several occasions: for example, it invented the rotating camera for taking selfies with the phone's main lens, and it has developed and improved systems that are becoming industry standards," Li points out. Two of the most successful in its latest models are facial recognition for unlocking the device and the application of artificial intelligence to photo editing software. "Anyone who thinks that China simply copies is mistaken. Mobile phones are the spearhead for changing that perception worldwide," says the executive.
After ceasing operations in our country in 2016, Oppo is back with the opening of an office in Madrid.
Oppo, a company belonging to the technology giant BBK Electronics, is trying again in Europe. After disappearing from Spain in 2016 with the excuse of focusing on the eastern part of the country, "the time has come to continue growing and reappear on the Old Continent," explains Oppo.
The Chinese company, second largest manufacturer in its country of origin and fourth largest worldwideThe company has established its European headquarters in Paris, along with local offices in Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands. "These are the most dynamic markets and where we knew we needed to be, but we are already preparing to launch in other regions such as Poland," they added.
Oppo demonstrated its power to the European market in a presentation at the Louvre Paris, which has closed its doors to host the launch of the company's new flagship, the Oppo Find X.
"This device is an example of the market we want to reach. It's a demanding audience that can no longer live without their device and expects the very best from it," the company explains.
The event at the Louvre served as both the brand's European launch and the official global presentation of the device. "The launch attracted hundreds of journalists from Asian media outlets because we are already very well known there. Now, our goal is to gain recognition in Europe and Spain," they stated.
"The average person needs to know who we are, not because we want to cannibalize the competition, but because we are innovative and have products that meet the standards of society and are even a step ahead."
The Chinese company already has opened its offices right in the heart of Plaza de Castilla in MadridBut the launch of its first products in the country will not take place until mid-summer or even September, according to the company itself.
Although they haven't revealed their strategy for this new phase, it's worth remembering that Oppo sought its niche in the Spanish market two years ago through online sales and strong sponsorships, such as that of FC Barcelona.
Oppo, the new Chinese giant (yet another one), arrives in our country ready to attract the attention of millennials and young consumers, the audience with which it most identifies, although logically its smartphones are for all ages.
We talk a lot about companies like Apple or Samsung, but the reality is that the global mobile market is dominated by the Chinese companiesHuawei, Xiaomi, and Oppo are the world's top-selling manufacturers, with the exception of the two mentioned above. Oppo's arrival in Spain This is great news, because we're talking about a brand whose parent company, BBK Electronics, is one of the world's largest consumer electronics companies, with a large number of brands in its portfolio, including Oppo, OnePlus, and Vivo. Who is Oppo, and what do their smartphones offer?And why is it so important that it has settled in Spain?
