Race Track Hyper | OnePlus' Li Jie: Raising the flag of smartphone homogenization

Author: Zhou Yuan / Wall Street See

Although not waving the flag of cost-effectiveness, OnePlus uses ultimate product power as its overall strategic guide, supplemented by user value satisfaction and a relatively low price strategy for equivalent products. With "OnePlus 12" as its flagship and culmination of its tenth anniversary, OnePlus showcases its differentiation in the high-end market.

In terms of product naming, OnePlus is different on the surface but consistent inside.

OnePlus has two series in the high-end market: the OnePlus number series, which does not have the common Pro, Ultra, or Max versions, only the standard version with a number; and the Ace number version, which is named "Performance Flagship". The former actually competes with the Pro/Ultra/Max versions, while the Ace number version competes with the standard versions of other brands' flagships.

This naming rule is based on the strategic guidance of prioritizing product power and marketing considerations. The strategic objective is clear, and the naming of product series is a well-designed core module in OnePlus' market strategy system. Such a naming convention is not arbitrary.

From the comparison of competitive parameters in the final segment of the OnePlus 12 launch event, it can be seen that the OnePlus number series actually competes with the Xiaomi 14 Pro. Although it appears to be the standard version, its actual product power is comparable to the Pro version, and its pricing is significantly lower than the Pro version but slightly higher than the standard version.

Why is this done?

Li Jie, President of OnePlus China, said, "Currently, the major shipments of all brands focus on the standard version." OnePlus follows the "product power first" strategy. Therefore, although the OnePlus 12 actually competes with the Pro version of its competitors, when promoting in the market, the naming of the standard version without a suffix, the relatively low pricing, and the relatively strong product power advantage may create a word-of-mouth effect that spreads through word of mouth, ultimately achieving Li Jie's expectation of "good word-of-mouth products can help us attract more users who have not used OnePlus before."

This is OnePlus' goal, whether it is the product power first strategy, product series naming, or the zero comprehensive net profit margin for hardware within three years, all serve this overall objective.

It is evident that OnePlus wants to expand its market share. However, this goal is likely to have a boundary, which is active control of sales volume.

Screen and Imaging: Challenging the Pro version of competitors

On December 5th, OnePlus released its annual flagship, "OnePlus 12". This is also the culmination of OnePlus' 10th anniversary, so it is called the "Ten-Year Flagship" by OnePlus.

The OnePlus 12 launch event lasted for 120 minutes. Li Jie, without getting tired, detailedly introduced the technical details of this OnePlus' most powerful performance flagship in all aspects, to the point where the audience on-site gradually became impatient.

Li Jie, who came from OPPO as a product manager, took over OnePlus in April 2022. At the media briefing after the launch event, Li Jie sat upright, with a straight posture and not leaning against the chair.

With Li Jie's "tension," he directly stated, "Next, we will continue to enhance our product power," quietly declaring that OnePlus' goal is to strengthen the industry's product competition and win with a strategy of prioritizing product power. How strong is the product power of OnePlus 12? It's hard to list them all, just like what Li Jie said, there are simply too many.

In summary, let's start with the screen. It features an OLED curved screen custom-made in collaboration with BOE, known as the "Eastern Screen" for eye protection and clarity: it supports 2K+120Hz LTPO3.0 adaptive refresh rate, with a peak brightness of 4500nit and supports 2160Hz high-frequency PWM dimming.

This screen is equipped with OPPO's first self-developed display chip, Display P1: it comes with a self-developed image quality engine and the industry's first "single-pixel independent calibration" technology for smartphones. By independently calibrating each pixel on the screen, it can avoid the grainy feeling during display and present a purer image.

At the same time, the Eastern Screen's color uniformity, transparency, low grayscale brightness, and color deviation are all solved at the circuit level, achieving 18 items of DisplayMate A+ record and becoming the first domestically produced 2K smartphone screen to receive DisplayMate A+ certification. It also meets the Dolby Vision standard compatibility, a configuration usually found only in the Pro version of high-end flagship models. This shows that although OnePlus 12 may appear to be a standard version, its product power is positioned as a Pro version.

This excellent screen adopts the "eye protection" technology, combining multiple functions such as 2160Hz high-frequency dimming, DC dimming, hardware low blue light design, natural light-like display, and ambient light adaptation to take care of users' eye protection needs in various scenarios such as gaming, movie watching, and night reading.

Next is the camera. The camera design of OnePlus 12 is handled by the flagship team of OPPO Find, and it debuts the "Super Light and Shadow Imaging System" within the OPPO system: it includes three rear cameras, the "ProXDR" screen, and corresponding imaging and display algorithms.

These three rear cameras include a 50-megapixel wide-angle main camera (LYT-808/5000) jointly developed with Sony, a 48-megapixel ultra-wide-angle/macro dual-use lens (IMX581), and a 64-megapixel super light and shadow periscope telephoto lens (OV64B) with Hasselblad color tuning.

The three lenses on the back of OnePlus 12, although the periscope telephoto sensor is not top-notch, the OPPO Find imaging tuning team's expertise in large aperture telephoto capability, highly accurate white balance control in high magnification zoom scenes, and flexible use of close-range focusing capabilities in the three rear cameras allow OnePlus 12's imaging performance to compete head-to-head with the Xiaomi 14 Pro and not fall behind.

Apart from the variable aperture and telephoto macro capabilities being inferior to the Xiaomi 14 Pro, other technologies such as pixel binning, dual native ISO, DOL-HDR, and full-pixel omnidirectional focusing (which are also standard capabilities of high-end Sony sensors) are on par with the Xiaomi 14 Pro. Moreover, the 12-bit ADC (analog-to-digital converter) sampling accuracy is four times that of the Xiaomi 14 Pro, surpassing the hardware limitation. It is worth mentioning that when shooting certain objects, the OnePlus 12 can achieve a telephoto macro function due to the flexible switching of its triple camera system. However, OnePlus has not officially stated that it has this telephoto macro capability. This is a "hidden" feature discovered by Wall Street News during the testing of the camera performance, rather than a standard function of the OnePlus 12.

In addition, the rear triple camera system of the OnePlus 12 is extremely versatile in processing portraits and night scenes, with a focus on natural light restoration in different scenes. In other words, it does not "actively" brighten the dark parts of the night scene, but it can restore details in the dark areas, resulting in a final effect that truly represents a night shot, rather than making the night scene look like it was taken during the day.

Emphasizing Product Power, Pricing, and Material Stacking

The OnePlus 12 is positioned as a high-end flagship, but its pursuit of performance is somewhat fanatic. After all, most high-end flagships in the industry pursue balanced and stable performance, so their tuning is usually not too radical.

However, the OnePlus 12 is an exception.

The OnePlus 12 is equipped with the Snapdragon 8Gen3 flagship chip and the top-of-the-line configuration includes 24GB LPDDR5 DRAM memory and 1TB UFS 4.0 flash storage, which is known as the high-end "iron triangle" combination of performance.

Why do we say that the OnePlus 12 has a radical tuning style and a fanatic pursuit of performance?

The pursuit of extreme heat dissipation can be seen as a window of observation. In what scenarios would heat dissipation be emphasized? It is in scenarios where the CPU frequency is running at full speed (such as running high-load games) while also requiring control over power consumption. This directly affects the user's perception of temperature and battery life, which are parts that users can directly sense.

The OnePlus 12 uses a large-area VC heat dissipation plate with an area of up to 9140 square millimeters. This time, it also inherits the "Lava Airway" design that was first introduced in the OnePlus Ace2 Pro. Although the heat dissipation material area is the same as the Ace2 Pro, the manufacturing process has been further improved.

Through the application of large-scale heat dissipation VC heat dissipation plate, microarchitecture supercomputing engine tuning, memory gene recombination, and refreshed storage design, the OnePlus 12 can achieve a score of over 2.2 million on AnTuTu without the need for additional cooling, only 1% lower than the score with the cooling mode enabled.

In order to achieve the performance brought by extreme performance, OnePlus spares no effort. For example, on August 9, 2022, OnePlus released the Ace Pro, becoming the first in the industry to eliminate 8GB of RAM and directly start from 16GB. At that time, the price of memory did not decrease, so OnePlus did not introduce large-capacity DRAM because of the low memory price.

"When we do things, it is not because the price of memory has dropped. If we do it for that reason, it is not a product-oriented approach, but a cost-oriented one," said Li Jie. "For us, the fluctuation of memory prices is an external factor. The most important thing for us is to clarify our own goals, which is to adhere to the 'product power first' strategy."

The pricing of the various memory configurations of the OnePlus 12 can be described as "rolling" out the ultimate performance: the 12GB+256GB version is priced at 4,299 yuan, while the Xiaomi 14 Pro is priced at 4,999 yuan, and the standard version of the Xiaomi 14 is also priced at 4,299 yuan. The pricing for the 16GB+512GB version is 4799 yuan, while the Xiaomi 14 Pro is priced at 5499 yuan and the Xiaomi 14 is priced at 4599 yuan. The 16GB+1TB version is priced at 5299 yuan, the Xiaomi 14 Pro is priced at 5999 yuan, and the Xiaomi 14 is priced at 4999 yuan.

In addition, the OnePlus 12 with a 24GB+1TB configuration is priced at 5799 yuan, while the Xiaomi 14 Pro does not have a similar configuration.

Clearly, compared to the same configuration of the Xiaomi 14 Pro, all memory configurations of the OnePlus 12 are 700 yuan cheaper. The OnePlus 12 with a 24GB+1TB configuration is 200 yuan cheaper than the Xiaomi 14 Pro with a 16GB+1TB configuration.

What is "product power priority"? What is the relationship between product power and pricing?

Li Jie said, "If the product power is similar, OnePlus will definitely have a more extreme pricing; if the prices are similar, OnePlus will definitely have a more advanced product power." This is the essence of OnePlus 12's "one is all" concept, and it is also OnePlus' overall strategy.

"'Product power priority' does not mean prioritizing hardware or specifications. These hardware, materials, and specifications ultimately need to return to the user experience," Li Jie said. "In the future, OnePlus will definitely continue to focus on top-tier hardware, which is what everyone calls 'materials'. It is unrealistic to try to make the hardware parameters better than others through various means without stacking materials. The hardware is the foundation, and we will definitely choose the best hardware in each price range."

Considerations: Can go three years without making a profit

As a sub-brand of OPPO, pursuing product power with such enthusiasm and setting such aggressive pricing, will it harm OPPO? What is the relationship between OnePlus and OPPO?

OnePlus founder Liu Zuohu said, "OPPO and OnePlus operate relatively independently. Apart from sharing underlying architecture, platforms, technology, and supply chains, the two brands have their own clear positioning, independent product line research and development systems, and marketing systems. By establishing their own brand characteristics and targeting different users, they launch differentiated products."

Li Jie further explained that OPPO is a brand that covers all channels and has a larger user base than OnePlus. The target audience of the two brands is different.

OnePlus focuses more on the performance track, and the initial technology of their products also focuses on performance. The entire model, including product positioning and user base, is more focused on the young male market and student population. This is OnePlus' strategy. There is a dedicated team working on OnePlus from the perspectives of brand, market, and product, while sharing underlying technologies, platform architecture, supply chains, after-sales service, and channels with OPPO.

Currently, the OnePlus product structure consists of four modules: from the 2000 yuan range to the 5000 yuan range, namely Ace V, Ace Digital, Ace Pro, and the Digital Series flagship.

Among them, the Digital Series is in the 4000-5000 yuan range, and the Ace Series is priced from high to low: Ace Pro, Ace Digital, and Ace V, corresponding to the price ranges of 3000-4000 yuan, 2500-3500 yuan, and 2000-2500 yuan, respectively. Liu Zuohu said, "The OnePlus digital series is OnePlus' high-end flagship, positioned as a leader in cutting-edge technology; the Ace series, on the other hand, serves as a performance benchmark, aiming to popularize flagship experiences."

It is evident that the OnePlus product line currently does not have any models priced below 2,000 yuan.

Li Jie said, "Currently, we have four products (OnePlus digital series + Ace series), and each product will last for one year without any iterations in between. Our goal is to make each product in its respective segment the best in that segment. This is our product planning strategy. At this stage, it is more important for us to focus on improving the digital series and Ace series. If there is a market demand for products priced below 2,000 yuan, we will consider it, but currently, we do not have such a plan."

From the perspective of OnePlus' product strength, such as performance, screen, imaging, heat dissipation, gaming, naming, and pricing, the OnePlus 12 demonstrates strong competitiveness. However, such an aggressive pricing strategy may not yield significant profits. OnePlus explains that this is the result of their proactive control.

This raises a question: the higher the sales volume of the OnePlus 12, the higher the cost, and the profit margin may be very slim, even close to zero. Li Jie admits that profit is not OnePlus' main focus at this stage. "Profit is not our biggest consideration at the moment. We mentioned during our 9th anniversary that OnePlus' comprehensive net profit margin for hardware can be zero in the next three years."

Why go through all this trouble, even willing to operate at zero profit?

Li Jie said, "I believe that products with good reputation can help us attract more users who have never used OnePlus before. We hope to build a good reputation through these excellent products and use that reputation to influence others, which will allow us to gain more users. We hope to create a positive cycle: this way, we can invest more in research and development of new technologies, focus on producing excellent products and outstanding technological experiences, and start a new positive cycle."

This may be the implementation path of OnePlus' commitment to "not following, not blindly imitating, not compromising, and returning everything to user value," as mentioned by Liu Zuohu.

However, the essence of business or its inherent mission is to make a profit.

From this perspective, although OnePlus actively chooses not to make a profit, they have also clearly set a time frame: 2023-2025. This indicates that OnePlus' current core mission is likely to be engraving a deep impression of "strong product capabilities" and "unlimited pursuit of realizing user value" among their target audience, rather than pursuing market share as the primary goal.

Therefore, it is not difficult to speculate that OnePlus may actively control the scale of sales, minimizing costs and expenses, in order to achieve a magnificent transformation after the expiration of the 2025 period.