On June 16, Pete Lau, co-founder and CEO of OnePlus, released an internal email announcing that the company will be merged with smartphone giant OPPO.

Details: "Under the unanimous suggestion of OnePlus and OPPO's core management team, we decided to merge the two parties. OnePlus will become an independently operated brand under OPPO," Lau said in the email, adding that the decision came after he took on a second role as OPPO's chief product officer in May 2020.

"Since then, we have integrated a number of our teams together with OPPO to better streamline our operations and capitalize on additional shared resources," Lau wrote in a forum post. "After seeing positive impact from those changes, we’ve decided to further integrate our organization with OPPO."

Before founding OnePlus in 2013, Liu worked for OPPO for 15 years and became the head of OPPO's smartphone business.

"In the future, the two parties will fully integrate, and jointly provide more innovative and differentiated products, as well as more convenient and more thoughtful services for global users," OPPO said.

Context：Both OnePlus and OPPO are owned by BBK Electronics, a Chinese tech giant which also owns smartphone brands including Realme, Vivo and iQOO. 

Over the past seven years, OnePlus has been building a fanatical customer base in North America. It ranked No. 8 in the US market with 0.6% market share in 2019, according to Counterpoint Research. 

This week, OnePlus announced details about its cheapest 5G phone to date, the $240 OnePlus Nord N200, which goes on sale later this month.