OnePlus to Exit India, US and Europe in OPPO’s Broader Retreat

OnePlus will start winding down its operations in the United States and Europe this week and plans to leave India by 2027, according to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the plan. The move caps a wider restructuring at parent company OPPO, driven by weak demand, rising component costs and a historic memory chip shortage the industry has nicknamed RAMageddon.

OnePlus built its name on selling flagship specs at bargain prices. That model needed cheap memory chips to work, and 2026 turned out to be the year memory chips stopped being cheap.

OPPO Begins Shutting Down OnePlus in the US and Europe

OnePlus will wind down its US and European operations as early as this week, Bloomberg reported, citing a person familiar with the plan who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. The Android phone maker, once celebrated by enthusiasts as a “flagship killer,” built its following by undercutting Apple and Samsung on price without gutting performance.

The shutdown sits inside a broader reshuffle at parent company OPPO, formally Guangdong Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corporation Ltd. Sister brand Realme will exit China entirely as part of the same overhaul, even as OnePlus keeps operating in its home market.

People familiar with OPPO’s plans point to four overlapping pressures behind the decision:

• Financial strain across OPPO’s phone business in several of its biggest markets.
• Weak demand momentum in the US, Europe and India that has stalled for years, not months.
• Geopolitical friction tied to selling Chinese-made phones in the US.
• An Apple lawsuit over trade secrets that adds legal exposure to staying put.

None of the four pressures is new by itself. Together, they made unprofitable markets harder to justify.

RAMageddon Turns a Cut-Rate Business Model Toxic

Behind the corporate reshuffle sits a supply problem nobody in the phone business can simply price around. A global shortage of memory chips has pushed DRAM and NAND costs high enough that cheap Android phones are taking the brunt of it.

The International Data Corporation (IDC) and Counterpoint Research now both forecast a 13.9% drop in global smartphone shipments for 2026, the steepest annual shipment decline IDC has ever recorded. IDC puts this year’s total at roughly 1.09 billion units; Counterpoint’s own estimate lands just below that, at 1.08 billion, which would be the lowest volume since 2013.

“The deepening memory shortage crisis remains the dominant force behind the record 14% drop this year,” said Nabila Popal, IDC’s senior research director for worldwide consumer devices.

China’s own second-quarter numbers already show the strain on OPPO’s home turf. Handset shipments there fell 4.3% year-over-year to roughly 66 million units, the fifth straight quarterly decline, with Apple and Huawei the only major vendors still growing.

Counterpoint says Chinese brands like OPPO feel the memory squeeze harder than Apple or Samsung, since thinner margins leave less room to absorb it. Entry-level component costs alone have jumped 20% to 30% since early 2025.

Why Did Reports First Say India Would Be Spared?

Early coverage of OPPO’s restructuring centered almost entirely on the US and Europe, leaving room to assume India might dodge it. A follow-up account grounded in the same Bloomberg sourcing closed that gap: OnePlus will wind down in India too, just on a longer runway, sometime in 2027, while China stays its only untouched market.

It isn’t the first time “OnePlus” and “shutdown” have shared a headline in India this year.

We’re operating as usual and will continue to do so. Never Settle.

Robin Liu, OnePlus India’s chief executive at the time, posted that statement on X back in February, pushing back on an earlier round of shutdown speculation tied to reports of retail disruption.

Those retail disruptions were real, even if the shutdown wasn’t, at least not yet. OnePlus has spent months quietly closing most of its partner-run offline stores in India, shifting toward an online-first model and folding its after-sales network into OPPO’s. The company has also raised prices on the 15R, Nord 6 and Nord CE 6 three times this year, a sign the memory squeeze was visible on Indian shelves long before Bloomberg’s report.

From Flagship Killer to Fourth-Place Finisher

OnePlus was founded in 2013 by Pete Lau and Carl Pei, who set out to build affordable Android phones for enthusiasts willing to trade brand prestige for spec sheets. Pei left the company in 2020 to start Nothing, a rival phone maker that has since built its own following.

“Brands now face a simple choice: raise prices by 30% or more in some cases, or downgrade specs,” Pei warned back in February, months before his old company’s own retreat became public.

The Nord series arrived later, aimed at buyers priced out of OnePlus’s own flagship line as those prices crept upward. None of it was enough to crack the US market. Apple and Samsung dominate there, and OnePlus trails even smaller rivals like Motorola, owned by Lenovo, and Google, part of Alphabet. Shoppers weighing budget options today are just as likely to compare the Nord CE6 Lite against Motorola’s G77 Power, exactly the matchup OnePlus needed to win and hasn’t.

Globally, OPPO ranks fourth in smartphone shipments, with a market share that slipped to 10% this year, down 2 percentage points from 2025. The slide was already visible in the first quarter, when global shipments fell 2.9% year-over-year to 293.8 million units, breaking a ten-quarter growth streak. OPPO’s own second quarter was worse: a double-digit shipment decline year-over-year, with “softness across most of its key markets,” Counterpoint found.

OPPO Redraws Its Map Toward Central Europe and the Nordics

The restructuring isn’t a full retreat from the West, just a narrower one. OPPO plans to concentrate its own branded phones on Central Europe, while pushing Realme into the Nordic region, meaning Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland, markets where the brand has already found traction.

Realme’s trajectory is the mirror image of OnePlus’s. It’s exiting China entirely as part of the same overhaul, even as it keeps launching new phones in markets like India. Realme launched the Narzo 100x 5G with an 8,000mAh battery in India on July 15, a reminder that OPPO’s other consumer brand is still actively building there, even as OnePlus’s long-term future in the same market dims.

What Comes Next for Budget Android

OnePlus won’t be the last casualty of RAMageddon. IDC expects further consolidation as smaller phone makers run out of room to compete on price, unable to secure memory supply on workable terms.

Not every corner of the market is shrinking. Foldable phones are forecast to grow 20% year-over-year in 2026, one of the few bright spots in an otherwise grim outlook, helped by Apple’s own entry into the category later this year. Huawei’s HarmonyOS is another: IDC now expects it to reach 62 million units in 2026, up sharply from an earlier forecast, as Huawei pushes the software into entry-level phones across China’s smaller cities.

Samsung is growing share too, defying the broader Android slide by leaning into foldables and the mid-range, exactly the ground OnePlus is now abandoning.

For now, OnePlus phones already on shelves in the US and Europe will keep selling until stock runs out, with no restock planned once they’re gone. OnePlus and OPPO have said existing software update and warranty promises will still be honored, at least until each device’s support window closes on its own.

Frequently Asked Questions

Has OnePlus or OPPO officially confirmed the plan?

No. A spokesperson representing OPPO and OnePlus declined to comment when Bloomberg asked about the restructuring, and neither company has issued a public statement confirming a timeline. The reporting rests on people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss a private plan.

When exactly will OnePlus leave India?

Bloomberg’s sourcing points to sometime in 2027, without an exact date attached. In the meantime, OnePlus launched the N6 in India on June 30, 2026, and has been teasing a follow-up N6x, evidence that ordinary product launches are continuing even as the longer-term exit plan takes shape.

Did OnePlus just launch a phone in the US before this decision?

Yes. Its most recent flagship, the OnePlus 15, launched globally on November 13, 2025, though the US sale was delayed because Federal Communications Commission (FCC) certification was backed up by a government shutdown that had ended only a day earlier.

Is this just a OnePlus problem, or is the whole industry struggling?

It’s industry-wide. Apple has raised prices across much of its lineup because of the same memory squeeze, with CEO Tim Cook calling the increases “unavoidable,” and both IDC and Counterpoint project the steepest annual smartphone shipment decline on record.

Will OPPO’s other brands fill the gap in the US and Europe?

Not really. OPPO plans to concentrate its own branded phones on Central Europe, while Realme shifts its international focus to the Nordic region, leaving no clear successor brand targeting the broader US or Western European markets OnePlus is exiting.