The History of BBK

Electronics – Parent
Company of OPPO, OnePlus
& Vivo Electronics
May 14, 2016

Are you familiar with Volkswagen Group? It is an

automaker and one of the largest auto giants in the world,
who has their best selling passenger cars as well as has
other brands like Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lambhorghini,
Porsche, Skoda and many more. Why I’m giving you an
example of an automaker on a story about an electronics
company? Well, just like the VW Group, BBK Electronics
is a giant group, which holds three brands under its
name, technically OPPO and Vivo are parts of BBK, while
the OnePlus is a wholly owned subsidiary of the OPPO.

So, why an electronics company have three different

brands under its name? How do they come to be in
existence? What are their plans with it? We explain all in
this story about the BBK Electronics.

What is BBK Electronics?

BBK Electronics Corporation is a Guangdong based

consumer electronics manufacturer with their
headquarters and production base in Chang’an,
Dongguan. It is said to be the highest contributor to the
tax money in Chang’an and thus you can see the
introduction of the company listed at people’s
government of chang’an town. The company came into
existence in the year of 1995 and month of September.
According the listing of government website it has
manufacturing factories spread in 10 Hectares of land
and employees more than 17,000 people. It has different
branches that cater to myriad of businesses that are
operational all over the world.

The listing also claims that BBK has two branches and
one subsidiary under its name, where it does business in
research, production and sale of educational electronics
product such as learning machines, language repeaters,
electronics dictionary, reading machines, etc. They also
manufactured landline and cordless phones at that time.
It has Blu-ray Disc players, headphones and headphone
amplifiers that comes under the OPPO digital division.
While when it comes to smartphones, it has three brands
OPPO, Vivo and OnePlus that serves as phones
manufacturer.

Note that the brands stated below are in accordance

with their timeline.
OPPO

Birth

First brand that came into existence was the OPPO

Electronics, its major product lineup includes more than
just smartphone, it manufactures Blu-ray players and
Universal DVD player as well. The company was founded
in 2004 and Tony Chen who is the current CEO of the
company is listed as the corporation, which is actually a
subsidiary of the BBK Electronics. Company entered the
mobile phone market in the year of 2008 and just within
five year it was reportedly the second most profitable
company in China in 2013 among the players like ZTE,
Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi.

Oppo Digital an independently operating division of

OPPO Electronics was
setup in the United
States in California,
which is known for
offering Up-
Converting DVD and
Blu-ray Disc players.
The first product that they sold was OPPO OPDV971H,
which was a Universal DVD player.

Products & Growth

The mobile handset that no one might know that OPPO

produced was R819/R819T. While the handsets that you
might have heard falls under Find, N and R Series. The N1
was world’s first handset that came with a rotating
camera that can be used as back or rear and that’s when
the camera dedicated N Series was born in December
2013. After that next year in March, company launched
the Find 7a and then Find 7, the later sported the world’s
first Quad HD (2560 x 1440) display, which was available
in May 2014. Later that year in October, company
announced their design focused smartphone, the R5,
which was slimmest smartphone of the year measuring
just 4.9mm. These series were upgraded in the coming
year and thanks to that the brand is listed among the top
five smartphone brands in the world, replacing the likes
of Lenovo and Xiaomi. Considered as the premium
smartphone maker, OPPO relies on the strong offline
retailer network it has created in the home country.
The brand started its international expansion in 2010
starting with Thailand, where the brand first announce
Find 3 and then later showcased the Find 5, which was
followed by the Find 7. In parallel, company expanded its
presence in countries like Philippines, Myanmar, Vietnam,
Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and
many more regions. Company operates locally in these
regions catering the needs according to the audience.

India Presence

OPPO officially entered in India on 27 January 2014, and

the Find 7 was the first handset that was launched in the
country. The brand then moved to launch several
handsets including Mirror 3, N1, N1 Mini, Joy, Joy Plus,
Neo 3, R5, R7 and R7 Lite. Recently, company has
launched its new series, the F1 and F1 Plus, they are
being touted as the Selfie Expert phones; the later
handset comes with 16MP front facing module. The
brand has been focused in launching premium quality
handsets in the country since its official operations. To
move forward with its plans in India, they have dedicated
a promise to start manufacturing in India under the Make
in India campaign run by the Indian government. As per
reports, the brand is going to make 10 lakh 4G phones
per month at its upcoming facility in Noida, as told by
Mike Wang, CEO of Oppo Mobiles India. Company has
invested Rs 100 Crore for setting up the manufacturing
unit. OPPO has manufacturing partnership with Foxconn
in India; Mr Wang confirms that Foxconn will be
manufacturing phones for them even after their Noida
facility starts production.

Vivo

Birth

Another sub-branded arm of the BBK Electronics, the

Vivo was founded in 2009 by Shen Wei, who serves as
president and CEO of the company. It has headquarters
in Guangdong, China; the company designs, develops
and manufactures smartphones, accessories, software
and online services. They have research and
development center in Shenzhen and Nanjing, where
company employees 1600 people as of this year. It was
not until 2011 that they started selling their first
smartphone, which was a lesser-known handset.

The brand is known to use Hi-Fi Technology, which is

short for High Fidelity audio experience. It’s a hardware
level technology that company integrates in their
handsets, started with at the time world’s slimmest
smartphone, the X1, launched in 2012. These Hi-Fi chips
are developed by American semiconductor company
Circus Logic, which is Vivo’s R & D that works on it to
integrate in their smartphones. Before launching X1,
company had setup an audio lab in Shenzhen to research
on how the Hi-Fi sound can be merged with smartphone
technology. The company not only works on hardware,
but develops intuitive interactive systems connecting its
users and phone. Thus, you can see that brand has their
own customized Android-based operating system called
Funtouch OS, which offers range of smart features such
as Smart Click, Super Screenshot, Smart Wake, Single-
handed mode and various other smart features on their
handsets.

Products & Growth

Talking about their product range, it is spread among

premium offering such as X Series to mid-level offering in
the form of V Series, which is a combination of solid
specification and attractive price tag. There is a price-
conscious Y Series to cater the lower end of the
spectrum. After announcing X1, company continued their
journey of slimmest handsets in the form of X3S, X5,
X5Max and X5Pro. They also introduced two handsets
out of which one was focused in offering the best camera
quality company have to offer, goes by name Xshot. The
second handset named XPlay 3s that was launched in
2013 was more focused for providing best display as it
featured Quad HD screen. Company also has Hi-Fi
technology enabled headphone, XE800 that are intended
for Vivo smartphones.

The Y51 is the most recent handset launched in

December 2015 in their lower-end segment, but is still
loaded with Smart software Funtouch OS and a host of
features such as Smart Wake, Smart Beauty mode, and
Smart Click. In their V Series, apart from the popular V1
and V1 Max, the brand has recently upgraded the series
with V3 and V3 Max, which is launched in the home as
well as international markets as well. Like OPPO, Vivo has
expanded into various countries like India, Malaysia,
Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam and Philippines.
The international path, which was started in 2011, now
has seen company certified for operations in over 100
countries.

According to company’s website, they have sold over 25

million in China, which was in 2014, while the growth was
at 45 million worldwide sales in 2015. With an average
retail price of $300, which might be huge than most of
the Chinese companies with an international presence.
As you know, Vivo recently breaks into the world’s top
five smartphone brands list, as they have registered more
than 150% growth in sales.

India Presence

Vivo officially entered in India in December 2014 with

world’s slimmest smartphone at time, the X5Max, which
was priced quite premium around Rs 32,000. In the short
span of less than two years company has launched most
of its line-up in country, which counts up to 16
smartphones in India. Spreading in three X, Y and V
Series, they offer a wide range of options to Indian
audience catering needs such as premium, mid and entry
level. The brand is focused in creating a strong retail and
after sales network in country to offer their services to
most parts of the country. Currently, they have 8000
employees serving Indian customers and a network of
10,000 retailers in over 300 cities in 22 states. Company
plans to establish more than 200 exclusive after sales
services for their customers by the end of the 2016.

According a report released by Counterpoint Research,

as of last year, company has already capture 1% market
share in the country, while it is estimated to grow double.
As the brand has increased its activities in the country
and launching their handset quite quickly. One example is
the V3 and V3 Max, which saw the global launch of the
handset in the country last month in Mumbai. Alex Feng,
the CEO of Vivo India remarks the various partnerships
like Viacom18 and IPL, which would lead company to
grow to much larger audience in the coming years.
Moreover, they have also invested Rs 125 Crore in the
“Make in India” campaign run by Indian government. Total
2,200 Indian employees will be working in the Great
Noida facility where Vivo phones are set to be
manufactured. It will allow company to reach a goal of
one million units per month, thus, building solid
foundation for company in the country.

OnePlus

Birth
OnePlus, hasn’t been around for long, this young startup
was founded on 16th December 2013 by an ex-employee
of OPPO Electronics, Pete Lau. The company is based
out of Shenzhen, Guangdong and has presence in 43
countries around the world as of March 2016. The co-
founder includes Carl Pei. Initially denying the claims that
OnePlus is a subsidiary of the OPPO, it was later revealed
as per the Chinese government documentation that it is
truly the wholly owned subsidiary of OPPO. Thus,
technically making it a company owned by BBK
Electronics, as OPPO is the sub brand of the Chinese
multinational group. In result, OnePlus can be said as the
sub-brand of the sub-brand. That’s quite an inception.

While OPPO and Vivo are focused in creating and

maintain themselves as premium offline smartphone
brands, OnePlus aims to deliver their products via online
services. Over the past couple of years of its operations,
company has tied up with several online retailers, while
the key player for selling their handset being Amazon,
when it comes to the sales outside China. In their home
country, they sell their products via their website store.
Continuing the association of Cyanogen formed when
OPPO N1 was loaded with CyanogenMod, OnePlus
entered into an exclusive licensing deal with the American
software company. This deal later fall apart after the
controversy as Cyanogen inked another exclusive deal
with Yu Televentures, an Indian smartphone brand, which
is the branchild of the Micromax fame Rahul Sharma. It
later resulted in creation of Oxygen OS, which is an in
house operating system developed by the company. CM
was removed from all the old models as an update for
Oxygen OS was provided while the new OnePlus
handsets saw their custom Android OS out of the box.

Products & Growth

Talking about the products, the first handset, OnePlus

One, was launched by the company on April 23rd, 2014;
just a couple of months after the company was formed. It
aggressive pricing and ground breaking specifications,
the company also introduced first its kind invite system to
purchase their first handset, it received a lot of heat from
the smartphone consumers who wanted to buy their
handsets but couldn’t because of the invite system. With
the further launch of products the invite system was
improved, and in some countries the devices has been
made invite-free. Later, the company announced the
successor, which was dubbed as “Flagship Killer of
2016”, the OnePlus 2, unveiled in July 2015 in their home
country while the international release was in August
2015. The company claimed that their handset is so good
that it can compete with the devices that are stated for
launch in 2016. Carl Pei, the co-founder seemed more
amused by the first 5-inch device which they unveiled on
October 29th 2015. The international release of OnePlus
X happened on 5th November 2015.

As per the annual report card of 2014 posted by

company, they have earned over $300 Million revenue in
that year. The company didn’t specify how many
handsets they have actually sold, but it has been
speculated by reports popping up on internet that
number comes up to 1 Million. The top regions
accounting their sales include East Asia and Europe as
they amounted for 39% and 32% sales of their device in
2014. The brand hasn’t posted anything recently about
the sales figures of OnePlus 2 and OnePlus X. Which is
why, there are rumors that company has fallen short of
their targets for 2015, despite selling out all units in the
first batch.

India Presence

OnePlus stepped into India officially in December 2014,

which is when the company started selling the OnePlus
One in the country via Amazon. Now the 2014
smartphone is also available on Flipkart, another online
retailing website in India. Indian audience were among
few to enjoy the early availability of new OnePlus
products, and that’s what we hope Vikas Agarwal,
General Manager of OnePlus India would want to keep
active for the upcoming smartphones, as OnePlus 3 is in
the making for this year. In terms of the sales India has
contributed a lot, while for the first year, the brand has
missed their target of selling 1 Million smartphones.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as the company is still
young and has a long way to go to capture more Indian
audience.
Unlike its parent company, OPPO and sibling company
(Since it’s a part of BBK Electronics), Vivo, they don’t
have any plans to setup manufacturing plans to make
phones in India as of now. But when in future the sales
figures grow double digits Millions, it can be expected
that the young Chinese mobile company would express
their interest in “Make in India” campaign.

Vsun Mobile

Birth

Vsun, a mobile manufacturing company, which is

registered as Shenzen Vsun Communication Technology
Co. Ltd was founded in 2011 Xueying Zhang, who is the
Chairman and current owner of the company. Among the
key people is the recent hire Haitham Kalakesh, which
according to his Bayt profile states that he joined the
company in February 2015 as the CEO. Currently,
company employs around 600 people. In its early days
the brand started its business with the wholesale
distribution of electronic parts and communication
equipment. Those were the days when Smartphone
industry was still in the early stage of growth even in
developed countries. The private firm then went to get
itself registered globally in the year of 2013. Apart from
having a Headquarter in Guangdong, China, the company
started a regional headquarters head office in Business
Bay, Dubai. In 2015, a LLC was setup under the name of
Vsun Electronics Trading, which looks out the operation
in UAE and other gulf countries like Bahrain, Qatar, Oman,
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The company has presence in
African countries like Egypt, Kenya, Sudan and Nigeria.

The regional headquarters in Dubai was setup due to

high demand of their products in all gulf Persian
countries. The company has a software design team, R &
D facilities and multiple manufacturing units setup all
across the regions where they are operating. They go by
brand name Vsun Mobility in Dubai and the brand has
already received VAR Award in May 2015, which is given
for the fastest growing smartphone brand in the UAE.
The brand mostly sales its smartphone in gulf countries
with partnership with electronic retail stores and
hypermarkets. Though, it was recently that company
launched their e-commerce store named as
Vsunolinec.com in 2016. The brand aims to create a large
online presence of the brand in UAE as the online portal
will currently ship products to the UAE region only.

Products & Growth

Vsun reportedly entered into the smartphone business in

2011, but didn’t have a smartphone until two years later,
when they announced V6 and i5. These two handsets
were released in the month of Januray and February
during the year 2013. They sported decent set of
specification considering the technology at that time in
the market. That year they only had two smartphones on
sale, but next year the number was increased to 13. They
have handsets in Series named H, V, D and L. These four
series consisted the handsets ranged from entry-level
specs to mid and higher. Though, during their operations
in 2014, they had only one model with flagship
specification, it was Vsun H9, which sported the full HD
display, 2GB of RAM and had 13MP rear module
accompanied by a 5MP module on front. Later, next year
in early 2015, company announced a large screen variant
called H9 Furious. It was the year of phablet, the large
screen sized smartphones. In the same year, company
announced 11 other handsets, but there weren’t the
iterative of the Series of handsets launched a year before
that. Instead company seemed to shift its focus on
launching completely new handsets.

In 2015, Vsun launched six of those total 12 models at

GITEX, Dubai, which kick started the regional expansion
in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. During their keynote at
Exhibition, company also announced their expansion
plans to reach across the MENA regions. This year
company has so far launched three handsets, Illusion,
RACE and V Touch, out of these three models; two were
launched at GITEX Spring Exhibition 2016. The Illusion is
a 6-inch phablet offering from company that is priced
around $250, while the $200 RACE sports a 5-inch IPS
curve display. The main attraction in these two handsets
said to be that they are 360 Degree VR Compatible with
company’s VR headset.
Yes, the brand has forayed into the Virtual Reality
business, but offers only VR compatible with their two
handsets. Later, company launched V Touch in April this
year and has been available in the UAE since May 2016. It
is company’s first fingerprint sensor smartphone that
offers intelligent control of the biometric sensor.
Company touts that its fingerprint sensor is LED enabled,
which will allow to measure hear rate as well. Moreover,
with multiple fingerprint app navigation you can use
different fingerprints to navigate directly to different apps
from lock screen. Isn’t that amazing! They are also
planning to launch a 3G/4G enabled tablets in the market
and smartphones accessories in the coming months.
They have a dedicated Vsun Innovation Labs doing all the
research and development for the company. The VLabs
will dedicated their time in developing the Virtual Reality
content ranging from videos, games and 360 degree
animations, as they plan to push content to Vsun
customer’s smartphones.

India Presence

Vsun Mobile Private Limited, according to Zauba is a

privately held company and is reportedly registered at
Regsitrar of Companies, Delhi. The date of corporation is
10th September 2015, making its operation in Indian less
than a year old. The listing states that it is involved in
manufacturing electrical equipment. Thus, giving a little
benefit of doubt that whether the claim of having a
manufacturing unit is true or false. Though, it is little hard
to digest that a brand, which is hardly known in India has
setup a largest factory unit for manufacturing
smartphones. It is reported to have 40 assembly lines in
the 10 acre of land, which is quite a huge deal. The
manufacturing unit has a capacity of producing 40 million
devices a year. Vsun’s operations in India are handled by
Yao Jinji, Pardeep Jain and Ashish Aggarwal, who are the
Directors in the company. As of now, company hasn’t
shared any detailed whether they plan to sell their
smartphones in India. Moreover, there is currently no
India dedicated website from the brand where it’s
information can be accessed.

We make Wearables too – XTC

You might have been reading that wearables market is on

the rise since these past couples of years, thanks to
companies like Fitbit, Apple, and Samsung, who are the
top promoters of all things wearables, this arena is also
seeing tremendous growth. While it has been considered
that Samsung would be in the top five wearables
vendors, but did anybody thought, they would be sharing
a spot? Well, we didn’t at least. The South Korean giant is
sharing a fifth spot with BBK Electronics in the recently
released quarterly shipments by IDC, International Data
Corporation, which is a market researcher.

According to IDC, the total shipment volumes reached to

19.7 Million units in Q1 2016 compared to 11.8 Million
units in Q1 2015, which is a huge jump of 67.2%. What
could have caused that kind of jump in the shipments?
Well, there is no clear answer but in revolves around
post-holiday price reduction of multiple popular
wearables such as Apple Watch. While there is a certain
Kid’s watch, that can be used as a phone to contact the
parents.

It turns out BBK Electronics, who has three smartphones,

is also invested wearables market. The company’s
smartwatch for kids, XTC Y01, which is priced at 780
Yuan (Approx. $125) has seen more than 700,000 units
sale in the home country. As the wearables market grows,
China is among the largest contributors to the sales of
wearables, as the country has one of the highest
wearables consumers. Thus, cashing in the latest trend,
the BBK Corporation decided to introduce incredibly
resourceful smartwatch for kids. While they’re not as
popular as another Chinese firm, Xiaomi, which has Mi
Band to thank for their third spot in the list, as the
company has sold around 3.7 Million fitness trackers.

IMOO

BBK Electronics, which is practically the largest mobile

electronics group has done it again. There is a new brand
in town named IMOO, which has launched their first
handset GET sporting model number M1000. It is the first
of its kind Education focused phone. This brand was first
announced by the Chinese group in June this year. Solely
established to create educational content based
smartphones, the M1000 comes with free education
content from 1st to 12th standard, i.e. Primary to High
School. It offers a video catalog of 120,000 videos, which
can be streamed online. The brand has also tied up with
300 teachers that will help students with their problems
regarding academics.

Coming to the talk of why Imoo wants to see a

smartphone in hands of each student in China. Well, it is
quite simple, the brand is looking to revolutionize the way
students learn. While current generation might be aware
of the facts how the mobile technology can change the
way we learn, the implementation for that hasn’t done by
any company at such level where BBK has separately
setup a new smartphone brand for its education-focused
smartphones business. The device is said to be powered
by a custom OS named StudyOS, which is based on
Android 6.0 Marshmallow, which is the latest stable OS at
the time of covering this post.

Let’s briefly explore the specifications of the device. The

M1000 smartphone from IMOO packs a laser sensor that
is specifically designed to scan mathematic equations as
well as would help in solving the content as well. You can
also expect language translation services too. Since the
device is designed for educational consumption; the
parents can lock the entertainment apps when they feel
too. The hardware specs of the device are pretty
standard; it has a 5.5-inch AMOLED 1080p display, 3GB
of RAM, 32GB of internal storage and Helios P10 Chipset
at its core. You get 13MP rear camera and a 5MP front
camera. It is powered by a 2930 mAh capacity battery.

As far as the availability is concerned, the company is

going to stick with its home country, i.e. China. We don’t
expect the BBK Electronics to bring this overseas, even if
they do, it won’t be anytime soon.

Note: There is not much information available for this

new brand of BBK, which is why you don’t see the
sections such as Birth, Products & Growth, India
Presence for IMOO. Once there is any development or
any new information surfaces, you’ll see the article
updated.