Losing OnePlus in the US hurts, but it won't really matter

OnePlus is dead – apparently. We hear that OnePlus is shutting down most of its global operations soon, and even though it hasn’t happened yet, it’s got us thinking about OnePlus’ presence in the US and how sadly it won’t be gone. indeed issue.

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OnePlus is perhaps one of the most interesting Android brands of the last decade, and at the same time one of the most interesting participants in the US smartphone market. The brand has been responsible for some of my favorite Android phones, most notably the OnePlus Open and the OnePlus 13, both of which showed just how far behind US smartphones really are in terms of hardware.

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However, it won’t matter if OnePlus loses in the US.

Why?

The US smartphone market is largely a duopoly. Google Pixel has gathered a growing mass of customers, Motorola has its place, but this market falls mainly to Samsung and more to Apple. And this advantage on Apple’s side really affects the rest of the market. Everyone feels as if they are focused on competing with Apple, both moving people away from Apple and, more accurately, blocking their own buyers. From Switch to iPhone. This plays a major role in the development of new devices.

OnePlus, though, has always played it a little differently. Thanks to both its early role as an enthusiast-focused brand and its foothold in the Chinese smartphone market, OnePlus phones sold in the US clearly beat the competition on paper. Just look back I really liked the OnePlus 13. Compared to the dominant Android phone of the time, the Galaxy S24 Ultra, the OnePlus 13 had a bigger battery, faster charging, better camera hardware (overall) and a lower price.

The difference was even greater with the OnePlus 15, which had a 7,000mAh battery when most other flagships in the US barely made it. finallyExceeded 5000 mAh. Regardless of how you feel about this phone – our own Will Sattelberg wasn’t too hot about itDespite giving the OnePlus 13 a similar rating – it really showed how far behind many US devices are. OnePlus was the only brand indeed It’s progressing in the US.

Logically, you’d think a brand like this would put some pressure on the rest of the market and force competitors to up their game to stay relevant.

It just never happened.

OnePlus never saw the success it needed in the US, never really hitting the market and becoming a household name. A lot of it boils down to a short-term carrier stint it just didn’t work. Without carriers, most smartphone brands can’t survive in the US, and as OnePlus has shown us, it’s not exactly a silver bullet. OnePlus tried to make it work with the Best Buy partnership, but it will never have the same effect.

The death of OnePlus seems inevitable – proof it just keeps piling up.

I’m upset about this, especially because it means the US market loses one of its very few options, and perhaps one of its best when it comes to certain features like massive batteries. But ultimately the impact here will be minimal. The market has spoken, and people aren’t buying OnePlus smartphones in any meaningful numbers in the US – when you’re behind a Google Pixel, you know something isn’t working. There are OnePlus devices in the US is estimated for accounts for less than 0.5% of active usage based on web data (which is as we have seennot exactly infallible). Even if you combine that with the Oppo as an error rate, it’s still less than that Xiaomi constitutes. Oof.

The sad truth here is that years after OnePlus in the US, it had no impact on the wider market. Samsung, Google, Motorola, etc. Companies like OnePlus didn’t respond to the “pressure” that OnePlus had to offer. This is very frustrating because it makes most US smartphones feel quite stagnant compared to Android phones sold in other parts of the world. Latest Galaxy S26 Ultra, how goodit’s actually the same phone that Samsung has been releasing for the past few generations.

What do you think? Are you a OnePlus user? Will you miss the brand in the US? Discuss in the comments below!

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