Concern BBK Electronics decided to support all its brands with logos of companies known in the world of photography. Vivo has Zeiss and OnePlus has Hasselblad. However, the partnership with Hass cannot remain exclusive to 1+. OPPO will be next in line. This announcement was made by the company in Weibo:

Union

Actually, this news was not a surprise. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, official renders and photos of the upcoming OPPO Find X5 flagship line have been around for a long time. Here, for example, OPPO Find X5:

And here is OPPO Find X5 Pro:

These official renders were published on February 4 by well-known insider Evan Blass, known as Evleaks. And on them we are interested in the back cover, where there is the Hasselblad inscription:

And in the Chinese social network Weibo, a photo of the future flagship appeared. She confirms the render posted by Evan Blass:

The second reason why OPPO’s partnership with Hasselblad was obvious was the relationship between OPPO and OnePlus. The fact is that the relationship between the two brands that are part of the same concern has changed. They always went to each other for help, walked hand in hand, and now the proud, small and independent OnePlus brand has become a sub-brand of OPPO. This was announced at the very beginning of the year at CES 2022.

But the unification happened much earlier. Back in January 2021, it became known that OnePlus and OPPO were merging their own research and development departments. Actually, the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro released after that confirmed this fact: in China, instead of HydrogenOS, smartphones received ColorOS, the version of Android that is traditionally used in OPPO phones.

Yes, and OnePlus 10 Pro was not a revelation. At least its version for China. The smartphone has become a downgrade compared to last year’s OnePlus 9 Pro, having received mediocre cameras, where only one module is good – the main one. Sasha says this in his review:

The global version of the smartphone has not yet been released, but the global division of OnePlus assures that it will be different from the Chinese one. But how strong will these differences be?

Why was the merger necessary?

Because of the economy. According to Bloomberg , BBK has bet too heavily on promoting the OPPO brand outside of China. The bet didn’t play much, but you can donate one company. OnePlus is significantly smaller than OPPO, so the company will be killed very slowly.

At first, it seems like they were merged with OPPO, then they made OnePlus a sub-brand of the company, and then, as part of optimization, they will quietly forget about it. Still, the development of smartphones is an expensive process, and BBK has many flagship lines: both the more successful IQOO in China, and the “independent company” realme, which for some reason uses OPPO and vivo technologies. Actually, OPPO and vivo also make flagships.

From BBK intra-group competition, the head is spinning, and it is easier to get confused in all models than in Xiaomi smartphones.

So what does Hasselblad have to do with it?

In general, the situation is quite prosaic: the Swedish brand, which produces high-end medium format cameras for a lot of money, seems to only make color settings for BBK in a certain mode. Turning it on is not very convenient – you need to go to a special tab with a choice of additional modes, click on one of them and, finally, take a photo.

That’s all. Hasselblad does not help make optics, does not develop the main camera software. It only makes an additional mode that few people use.

Most likely, the secret is in the partnership of BBK with another Chinese company – DJI. She makes drones, stabilizers and action cameras. And she bought a majority stake in Hasselblad in 2017. Probably, the partnership with Hasselblad looks like this: BBK bails DJI a certain amount, and that allows you to use the Swedish company logo anywhere.

The partnership with Hasselblad for both brands will last three years. OnePlus has had a report since last March when the OnePlus 9 Pro came out:

At OPPO, it will end a year later, since the Find X5 line will be shown before the end of March. And I believe that OnePlus 12 will be the last smartphone of the brand, after which its history will end.