A few days ago we saw rumours that OnePlus co-founder and CEO Pete Lau was headed to OPPO as some form of product experience officer. I have said it, as have many others, OnePlus offer the greatest Android experience bar none, something that OPPO have lacked in recent times. Although they have improved OPPO’s ColorOS still does not deliver a software experience that matches the top notch hardware they use.
Ausdroid now has confirmation from OPPO that Pete Lau is indeed re-joining the OPPO team while maintaining his role as CEO of OnePlus. Remember that Pete was originally at OPPO before leaving to start up an enthusiast’s based smartphone company, OnePlus, with Carl Pei.
OPPO and OnePlus are sister companies too so it is not a huge jump for them to share ideas from one company to the other — we already know that they share supply chains and their devices are often very similar. (They also used to be housed in the same building, just on different floors, in Shenzhen — and may well still be)
Starting from June 2020, Pete Lau, CEO of OnePlus, also began serving as Chief Product Experience Officer of OPPO. His role will include providing feedback and suggestions on OPPO products to better the experience of users worldwide.
It is also rumoured that Pete will take control of product planning and development as well as whatever “product experience” entails. Whether he brings some of OnePlus’ strategies over or just modify OPPO’s current strategies or brings an entire new outlook remains to be seen.
In our opinion this bodes well for OPPO with Pete’s experience developing OnePlus into such a successful company with amazing software likely to bring some much-needed changes. We feel that OPPO will continue with their ColorOS Android skin but hopefully Pete will be able to encourage them to make it more user-friendly, focussed on how we use our phones.
At this stage it is pure speculation just where Pete will be looking to improve OPPO’s “product experience” but given their already top notch (if not best-in-class) hardware the only other area for improvement seems to be software — something that OnePlus excel at.
Expect this new role to start bearing fruit in the second half of next year given the time frame of software development for smartphones. We are excited about this new “hiring” and are definitely looking forward to its results. Are you?
If Pete is serious about UX, he should start selling OnePlus in Australia.
Oppo’s Android skin is one of the worst out there.
You’d think getting Oppo to use the OnePlus skin would be the easiest smart business decision ever!
Exactly 100%