Oppo's Future

When "how" worth more than "what" to produce
Project Overview
My team and I, 6 people in total, studied the current business model, the history and a possible future for Oppo by developing a new business design strategy.
My Contributions
I helped my team studying the current business model, and envision future business strategies. I learnt that is not important to focus on what to pursue next, rather how and why we make specific choices.
My team and I found that Oppo's products can be considered cheap clones of their bigger competitors. “We will stay focused on the smartphone segment” Oppo VP Alen Wu said in a press conference on 2017. For us this statement could lead Oppo to a risky future as the segment market in which it operates is soon to be saturated.

Our strategy was not focused on "what" Oppo's next product will be like, we rather provided a new direction to "how" new products and services should be ideated and developed.

Thus our idea: enhance current Oppo's strategy with two new elements. Oppo Gate, a new way to collect data about how products sales perform in different markets, and Oppo Drive that promotes research regarding next trend for specific product categories.
Oppo's Future
Design Thinking, Business Models.

Step one:
We aimed to investigate the current Oppo business model through the combination of the "55 basic business model patterns cards" created by St. Gallen University

Step two:
Our findings were discussed and reported in the shown business model diagram. After that, we explored strengths and weaknesses in order to envision potential business models.

Step three:
Oppo may not only be in the mobile phone market, but should explore more possibilities. So we developed "Oppo Gate" and "Oppo Drive" as an ecosystem that continuously generate new ideas for Oppo's future products.

Oppo Gate

With Oppo Gate, a selection of brands partner can place their products in one of the numerous Oppo stores in China or abroad (only 5% of sales in China are On-Line), to observe how sales perform.

By collecting quantitative data, it's possible to spot potential trends useful for the development of new products in target countries.

Oppo Drive

Oppo Drive deals with the organization of global events where designers from Oppo have the opportunity to have fun while survey current or future costumers.

In this way, designers get access to qualitative data about functional preferences or aesthetic insights regarding the development of future products.

In this scenario, Oppo doesn't simply produce smartphones. "Oppo Gate" and "Oppo Drive" are the elements in Oppo business structure that create a new self feeding ecosystem: Oppo Gate measure how products sales perform in different regions while Oppo Drive look for qualitative data from users to differentiate future products. We don't tell Oppo what to do in the future, we rather give directions how Oppo should innovate.

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