Tony Chen’s 2021 New Year Message
Friends,
Welcome to 2021, and I wish you all a happy New Year. For all of us as individuals, 2020 was a year dominated by the unexpected. For OPPO, as a company of over 40,000 people, it has been a year of adjustment and change.
Our focus at the beginning of the year was to manage the effects of the COVID outbreak on our colleagues, keeping their safety and wellbeing to the fore. With a lot of hard work we managed through the early part of the crisis with some success. We then restructured the company, simplified our product lines and launched the Find X2 Series, the Reno4 Series and the Reno5 Series of smartphones.
In 2020 we unveiled our “Technology for Mankind, Kindness for the World” brand belief and presented our 3+N+X development strategy.
We can be proud that in 2020, OPPO grew in a declining market. We remain the market leader in Southeast Asia. In India, we saw sales continue to rise with a 33% increase in brand preference. We tripled our shipments in Western Europe and Japan. By the end of 2020 we had almost 400M worldwide users of our ColorOS operating system. In China, the Reno5 Series broke our record for first-week sales which we had established with previous generations of Reno smartphones. It was then launched in Vietnam and is now rolling out globally. Also in 2020, we extended our range of Internet of Experience products with smart TVs, watches and headphones.
It has been a challenging year, but a successful year, and I pay tribute to all our colleagues, ecosystem partners and customers who have worked hard and with care in 2020.
In the new year, OPPO will continue on its journey of exploration to become a world leader in the Internet of Experience, where things and people become even more interconnected. Central to our approach is putting the user first in our design. We know that users see their smartphones and devices as ways to enhance their daily lives and so we try to make the experience as seamless as possible for them, secure and intuitive.
OPPO has now firmly established itself as more than a smartphone company, but the world is continuously evolving and OPPO keeps changing too. To our customers, we have become a gateway to a connected world, comprising a huge ecosystem of trusted partners from technology providers, operators and device manufacturers to artists and creators. OPPO continues to adapt around user needs, and we will do so again in 2021 and beyond.
The smartphone lies at the center of the OPPO ecosystem, and at the very top lies our flagship Find Series. Ten years of development of the Find Series will culminate in the first quarter of 2021 with the launch of the high-end Find X3, firmly establishing OPPO as a leader in refinement, style and quality.
Since OPPO’s inception in 2004 we have built a group of idealistic designers who define great by how a product or service helps people achieve their life ambitions. We encouraged them to explore the ultimate. Finder was the world’s thinnest smartphone in 2014, the Find 7 was equipped with new flash charge technology and the ‘panoramic’ Find X broke all the rules and conventions in 2018, representing some of OPPO’s finest high end work.
The essence of good design in a market-leading smartphone lies not in our love of technical specifications but in our respect for people and our love of what they wish to achieve in their lives through our smartphones. Our “Technology for Mankind, Kindness for the World” brand belief and “virtuous innovation” approach capture that belief.
Find X3 will demonstrate OPPO’s virtuous innovation in 2021: a more exciting product designed to make the future better. We fully expect the Find X3 to set the standard for high-end smartphones and secure OPPO’s position among the world’s most respected and trusted brands.
Friends, we are never alone if we try to do good, create beauty and pursue excellence. Our users around the world, and our ecosystem partners, have always been the source of OPPO’s strength in this endeavor. So, at the start of a new, and more positive, year, let us all continue to work to achieve those goals for mankind and the world. Together.
Wishing you a safe, prosperous and happy New Year.
Tony Chen, Founder and CEO, OPPO
4 January 2021
