realme wants to break away from OPPO, expand beyond phones

realme is looking to spin off into a completely separate company. Chung Hsiang-wei, Chief Commercial Officer of realme Taiwan has said (via Digitimes) that the company could branch out on its own if the business scale continues to expand.

realme already has its own R&D team and is expected to build its own production lines as well. The larger goal is to build an entire ecosystem of products.

Currently, realme relies quite a bit on OPPO for its resources. All of its smartphones still run OPPO’s ColorOS software with a few customizations.

In a previous interview with Android Authority, company head Madhav Sheth said, “We do share lots of resources (with OPPO) such as production, quality control and more. But we also have our own team working on features which realme users want.”

Even though realme and OPPO are hand in glove right now, Chung says their user bases don’t overlap. While 60% of OPPO’s users are female, 60% of realme users are men. The executive also highlighted that OPPO is moving towards the premium smartphone segment, while realme wants to focus on younger users.

He further cemented the company’s ambitions to target budget buyers by saying that the company will launch affordable 5G phones by the second quarter of 2020. One of the 5G phones that realme plans to launch in Taiwan is the realme X50 5G, which the company is already teasing.

Expanding the product line

While we can barely keep up with the launch of new realme phones, Chung says the company has its sights set beyond the smartphone market. The company plans to tap into the wearables, as well as truly wireless headset market, he confirmed.

The strategy sounds all too familiar and it seems realme wants to become the next Xiaomi. It has already risen up to be the fourth largest smartphone brand in India and the seventh globally.

With a total reach of 20 markets and a focus towards creating affordable devices, realme could be one of the biggest threats to the likes of Xiaomi and Samsung in the near future.

“We expect realme to become a serious contender in the market next year as growth will continue in emerging markets and online channels. The value for money proposition is also powerful in times of stagnant economic growth globally,” Counterpoint analysts noted in their latest global smartphone shipment report.