Here’s all signs suggest OnePlus is on its last legs

Fresh reports from Europe suggest that OnePlus is sliding into insignificance, but it’s just the latest in a series of troubling signs for the brand.

While the company continues to turn out reasonably high-quality products like the OnePlus 15, the brutal truth is that we’ve been waiting for news of its slow and painful death all year.

Indeed, the indications of OnePlus’s ill health go back even further.

Oppo’s European takeover

German website WinFuture recently issued a report revealing that the local OnePlus website was now promoting the products of its parent company, Oppo.

Discount banners for Oppo products are prominently featured, along with the following eyebrow-raising (machine-translated) exhortation: “Looking for new technology that gives you everything you want from OnePlus devices? OPPO has the speed you need and the experience you trust.”

Along with the reassurance that Oppo devices offer “seamless compatibility with existing OnePlus technology”, it all smacks of a major product line being elbowed out of the door whilst attempts are made to placate a committed user base.

It’s not on the UK OnePlus store, but almost everything there is out of stock, including phones, tablets and smartwatches – many of which we’ve loved and reviewed with high scores and topped our Best Picks. Only a handful of accessories remain available to purchase.

The report also points out that the number of OnePlus employees in Europe has noticeably decreased in recent months.

Not to get all ‘inside baseball’ on you, but we here at TechAdvisor have noted a marked increase in PR efforts for Oppo products and initiatives of late, with an almost complete drop-off in contact from OnePlus representatives since the start of 2026.

Furthermore, phone launches we were expecting, such as the OnePlus Nord 6, simply haven’t materialised.

A long time coming

All in all, it’s not a great look for a brand that established itself with an upstart, anti-establishment attitude around a dozen years ago.

With hindsight, the writing appears to have been on the wall for OnePlus as far back as October of 2020. This was when OnePlus co-founder and the brand’s youthful driving force Carl Pei left the company. He would go on to establish the similarly punchy London-based company Nothing, which is about to launch the Phone (4b).

Pei’s official exit came just a couple of months after his fellow OnePlus founder, Pete Lau, rejoined Oppo as Senior Vice President and Chief Product Experience Officer.

Less than a year later, Lau became SVP and Chief Product Officer (CPO) for Oppo as OnePlus formerly merged with its parent company. From that point on, OnePlus effectively became the Oppo sub-brand that it had always denied being during its early run of aggressively priced “flagship-killer” phones.

While reviews of the OnePlus 15 were widely positive around the time of its late-2025 release (that battery life though), I found some of the company’s decisions concerning.

Its design was blander, more generic, and not what we had come to expect from OnePlus. The camera system was technically inferior to that of its predecessor, and the Hasselblad partnerships had been dropped. To this day, you’ll need to choose an Oppo phone like the Oppo Find X9 Pro if you want a Hasselblad-approved photographic experience from your phone.

Just last week, Oppo announced the Reno 16 series of phones, with all three models getting a UK launch.

The final year of OnePlus?

Fast forward to 2026, and we’ve lost count of the number of news pieces reporting on the OnePlus brand’s imminent demise.

January brought the claims that OnePlus was being “wound down and put on life support” and effectively “dismantled” by parent company Oppo.

Evidence cited in this Android Headlines report included market analysis indicating a 20% year-on-year sales drop in 2024, as well as a 32.6% loss of market share in the company’s key India market.

OnePlus came out with a swift denial, calling the claims “false” and telling us that its business continued “to proceed as normal”.

It should be noted that the original report came under fire at the time for its use of AI in the structuring of the piece, prompting a complete rewrite – though the substance of the piece remained.

Then, in March, established tipster Yogesh Brar issued an X post (since deleted) claiming that OnePlus was shutting down in “select Global markets”.

While the brand’s China operations would continue, the tipster claimed that it was “Not a good news for US, UK & EU customers” [sic].

Oppo’s attempts to deny (and perhaps even suppress) all such reports suggest that it’s not quite ready to wash its hands of the OnePlus brand just yet.

Further evidence of this comes from fresh product launches like the OnePlus Nord 6 and (more recently) the OnePlus Pad 3 Pro, as well as the limited rollout of the OnePlus Pad 4.

Despite all this, neither company seems to want to do it the proper way and make an official announcement.

Regardless, all indications suggest that the company is seeking an orderly transition to the Oppo name and a managed decline for the brand that once promised to “Never Settle”.