OnePlus co-founder confirms his resignation from the company

[Inter_ok]

The co-founder of OnePlus, Carl Pei (Age 31) has left the company. He recently released a blogpost on OnePlus’ official forum. Pei said that OnePlus was his singular focus and almost everything else had to take a backseat and right now he wants to focus on his family, friends, things that had to wait and follow his heart.

 

Pei was an important individual of OnePlus and has been the public face of the company ever since it was founded. He was an influential character for planning out the OnePlus smartphones for the past 7 years or so. Pei left the company a few days after the release of their new flagship phone, the OnePlus 8T.

 

Sources surmised that there was tension rising between Carl Pei and Pete Lau (Founder of OnePlus) near to their OnePlus Nord launch. Lau took an additional role of SVP at Oppo. BBK Group owns OnePlus, Realme, Oppo, and Vivo. OnePlus never preferred to answer queries about its ownership composition.

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Summary

Carl Pei leaves OnePlus and focuses mainly on his family, friends and listens to his heart. The reason of the resignation could be because of tension with Pete Lau.

 

Quotes

Quote

After nearly 7 years at OnePlus, I’ve made the difficult decision to say goodbye.

Quote

I am eternally grateful to Pete for taking a chance in this kid without a college degree, with nothing to his name but a dream. The trust, mentorship, and camaraderie will never be forgotten. Thanks for the opportunity of a lifetime.

 

My thoughts

Whenever I heard about OnePlus, I would first think of Carl Pei. He was such an influential role and character for OnePlus. I hope things in his life get better and I'll definitely miss him. 

 

And for OnePlus, I think things would go pretty fine there. His team is such a wonderful group of people and always wants to innovate.

 

Sources

OnePlus forum about resignation: https://forums.oneplus.com/threads/thank-you.1323440/

 

Report from Yahoo!: https://news.yahoo.com/oneplus-co-founder-carl-pei-143959408.html
Tweet about internal tension: 

 

[A1200]

I had to google what oneplus was! I am a dumbphone user because I have tech all around me so out and about is my tech sanctuary/moderator of behaviour.

[RejZoR]

My guess is that his vision was to make flagship killers. It's what made OnePlus in the first place. It was as good hardware as possible for low price. When you become a flagship, you can't have flagship killers too interfering with your lineup. And now that OnePlus is slowly becoming the next Realme spawning bunch of models, he got fed up with it.

 

Expect new company to appear led by him and another flagship killer brand.

[S w a t s o n]

15 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Expect new company to appear led by him and another flagship killer brand.

Lets hope so, I really loved my OnePlus 3T, now they are trash other than the Nord which they wont fucking sell me

[IAmAndre]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

My guess is that his vision was to make flagship killers. It's what made OnePlus in the first place. It was as good hardware as possible for low price. When you become a flagship, you can't have flagship killers too interfering with your lineup. And now that OnePlus is slowly becoming the next Realme spawning bunch of models, he got fed up with it.

 

Expect new company to appear led by him and another flagship killer brand.

OnePlus' business plan was to basically lose money or generate as little as possible for a few years to be able to recover later, so he was aware of this since the very beginning. From what I've read, they just wouldn't be able to survive as a company over the years by making so little margins.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

27 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

OnePlus' business plan was to basically lose money or generate as little as possible for a few years to be able to recover later, so he was aware of this since the very beginning. From what I've read, they just wouldn't be able to survive as a company over the years by making so little margins.

Which makes perfect sense. Undercutting all of your competitors is just not financially sustainable. But when your whole brand image was built around being the flagship killer at medium to entry level prices and you're now you're essentially just any other flagship in every way (including price) but with arguably less visible R&D, then you're going to suffer. And I think they have as the OnePlus hype really has died down and only the enthusiasts care about them. They're charging Galaxy and iPhone prices for a device that's comparable in specs but with just stock Android. And for the average consumer, I think that's just not good enough. There's already not a lot differentiating phones these days so it's really down the included software. And if OnePlus can't compete with Samsung in bringing an interesting and complete experience to Android, then what's the point for them even existing? 

 

Maybe it's just me and how I never found stock Android appealing. But I like seeing what the likes of Samsung, Sony, etc. differ in how they shape the Android experience. 

[IAmAndre]

8 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Which makes perfect sense. Undercutting all of your competitors is just not financially sustainable. But when your whole brand image was built around being the flagship killer at medium to entry level prices and you're now you're essentially just any another flagship in everyway (including price) but with arguably less visible R&D, then you're going to suffer. And I think they have as the OnePlus hype really has died down and only the enthusiasts care about them. They're charging Galaxy and iPhone prices for a device that's comparable in specs but with just stock Android. And for the average consumer, I think that's just not good enough. There's already not a lot differentiating phones these days so it's really down the included software. And if OnePlus can't compete with Samsung in bringing an interesting and complete experience to Android, then what's the point for them even existing? 

 

Maybe it's just me and how I never found stock Android appealing. But I like seeing what the likes of Samsung, Sony, etc. differ in how they shape the Android experience. 

I mostly agree. They are basically another flagship maker with less appeal than their big competitors to the general audience. However this strategy kinda worked because it's what allows them now to enter the US/EU markets and have people actually buy their devices. This and their software gave them a name. But of course there's definitely no more OnePlus hype.

[Doobeedoo]

Kinda shame though. We'll see how it goes from here. 

I'll still keep a eye one future OnePlus phones, definitely to wait until they do with full and flat display too. Maybe I could see a flagship one and mid-range one, same chip but differentiate with other specs like display, battery, charging, cameras, speakers. Akin to how Apple does. 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

23 hours ago, IAmAndre said:

I mostly agree. They are basically another flagship maker with less appeal than their big competitors to the general audience. However this strategy kinda worked because it's what allows them now to enter the US/EU markets and have people actually buy their devices. This and their software gave them a name. But of course there's definitely no more OnePlus hype.

What software does OnePlus bring to the table? Because from listening to my friends who had and/or still have OnePlus devices, it was essentially just stock Android. I don't have much experience with OnePlus since it's not a brand you can just pickup from BestBuy or your carrier store. 

[IAmAndre]

6 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

What software does OnePlus bring to the table? Because from listening to my friends who had and/or still have OnePlus devices, it was essentially just stock Android. I don't have much experience with OnePlus since it's not a brand you can just pickup from BestBuy or your carrier store. 

It's pretty close to stock Android with some OnePlus customization so overall it was very clean and aimed towards performance, which contrasted with all major brands out there. Luckily Samsung is now doing better in this regard.

[AlTech]

13 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

What software does OnePlus bring to the table? Because from listening to my friends who had and/or still have OnePlus devices, it was essentially just stock Android. I don't have much experience with OnePlus since it's not a brand you can just pickup from BestBuy or your carrier store. 

Recently OnePlus has started moving to a less close to stock Android.

[AlwaysWong]

17 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Recently OnePlus has started moving to a less close to stock Android.

Out of everybody, they have to strike a deal with Facebook .

 

The new Oneplus 8T will not going to have facebook preinstalled. 

 

Now OnePlus wants to be another Samsung

[rice guru]

damn dude they keep adding reasons for me not to upgrade my onepllus 6t to another one plsu phone sad cause aside from the subpar camera I love how fast the phone is and how it has maintained it's original speed after a coupke of years of use something I can't say for my old LG and samsung phones. I guesse I'll be ditching them and hope the trend of cheaper versions of flagships get better cause Im not exactly prepared to spend a grand on a flagship just yet. 

[rice guru]

On 10/17/2020 at 4:06 PM, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

What software does OnePlus bring to the table? Because from listening to my friends who had and/or still have OnePlus devices, it was essentially just stock Android. I don't have much experience with OnePlus since it's not a brand you can just pickup from BestBuy or your carrier store. 

they bring oxygen OS which is near stock android but come with usually good features that sock android usually doesnt have. at least that was their appeal a few years ago. they also had killer hardware that was above the competitions in the one plus 6t days they had the fastest phone in the market and they were also pretty good at pusing the market forward while being unique. these days its hard to say what they offer aside from the competition as they are quicly losing their identity as a cheap flagship killer brand. their cameras leave a lot to be desired. and to me aside from the pop up camera of the onlus 7 pro they havent really done anything unique or compelling. the only thing I would consider them for now is if they brought underscreen camera tech while also improving how good their cameras are to be at least on par with the major brands. 

[jiyeon]

Damn dude, I really loved Carl. I saw him as the face of the company back in the day. I owned an original OnePlus One and even got an invite for the OnePlus 2 through the sign-up but hated the cameras so stayed with my OnePlus One. That was when they were still using CyanogenMod which was an abyssmal OS so my One lasted not even six months.

 

It's been fun to keep up with OnePlus but their new kid on the block approach seems to have died down a bit and their prices show that.

 

Obviously, I still respect OnePlus as a company but will be particularly interested in seeing how things go without Carl at the helm along with Pete Lau, the latter of whom is now the captain of the ship.