After returning to OPPO, realme officially bids farewell to the Chinese market.
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Author | Huang Yu
After announcing its return to OPPO at the beginning of the year, realme is finally going to exit the Chinese market.
On July 16, OPPO officially announced that in order to further integrate group resources and achieve global product strategy synergy, in the future realme's new products will focus on overseas markets, and product updates in the Chinese market will be suspended; OnePlus's product updates in the Chinese market remain unchanged.
At the same time, according to Wallstreetcn, realme and OnePlus are still positioned as gaming-focused brands.
Xu Qi, former Vice President of realme and President of realme China, also published a farewell letter on July 16, saying that for a young brand, learning to “focus” often requires more courage than “moving forward by inertia.”
Xu Qi said: “Today, I want to be honest with everyone: realme will press pause on the Chinese market. This is a decision made after careful consideration. Going forward, we will concentrate resources to develop the overseas market, focusing on performance and the gaming track.”
At the same time, he also stated that OPPO's official team will fully take over the follow-up sales and after-sales warranty of realme's existing Chinese region models. As for the system update, after the release of the next generation ColorOS, realme users can update to the ColorOS system when they receive the update notification.
Facing fierce market competition and the pressure of sharply rising storage prices, OPPO has chosen to focus and consolidate to retain more market share.
In early January 2026, OPPO announced to the public that realme would return to OPPO and become a subsidiary brand, aiming to further work together and integrate resources.
At that time, it was reported that after brand integration, OnePlus would focus on domestic and some overseas online markets, while non-China overseas markets would be handled by realme and the main OPPO brand, and OnePlus media relations would also be managed by OPPO Group.
This official announcement clarifies OPPO's target markets for each product line.
The birth of realme can be traced back to 2018. That year, OPPO established the realme sub-brand for the Indian market, but two months later, Li Bingzhong, who was responsible for the sub-brand, announced his departure from OPPO and took realme with him, making it an independent brand. In 2019, realme expanded to the Chinese market.
In other words, after nearly seven years in the Chinese market, the realme Neo8 became realme's farewell product in China.
The brand merge also brings corresponding adjustments to organizational structure.
According to previous reports from Leifeng.com, in April, OPPO internally issued a notice stating that it had established a new sub-series business unit, with OPPO Senior Vice President Li Bingzhong as its head. The marketing and service system for OnePlus and Realme within that unit would be managed by Xu Qi, who was appointed as the head of marketing and service for the sub-series business unit.
In 2025, OPPO faced significant pressure in the Chinese market. According to IDC data, throughout 2025, Huawei regained first place in the Chinese smartphone market with a shipment market share of 16.4%, followed by Apple, vivo, Xiaomi, and OPPO with shares of 16.2%, 16.2%, 15.4%, and 15.2% respectively.
After brand integration, in Q1 and Q2 of 2026 OPPO’s market share of smartphone shipments in China reached 15.9% and 16% respectively, continuously ranking third, only behind Huawei and Apple.
From a global perspective, OPPO's market share in the second quarter of 2026 was 10.4%, ranking fourth.
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