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Is this the same company that used to make amazing blu ray players ?


Actually, yes and no.

The Blu-ray players were made by a separate, but related entity. Oppo's parent company is BBK Electronics, and they operated two different companies using the name Oppo.

The Blu-ray players were made by Oppo Digital, headquartered in the United States.

The phones are made by Oppo Electronics.

Very confusing.
 
A straight up copy/paste job ain't "Competition"

Does this mean Oppo are only good and not great?


Steve Jobs: "Picasso had a saying -- 'good artists copy; great artists steal' -- and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."
 
Hmm, So we aggress its a clear fraudulent design and so forth... But I haven't seen court rulings filed in Texas for copy write ;) Where are all the lawyers doing or there still hitched to Epic? you think China would be more fun....
 
Looks like they copy and pasted the Apple Watch design. No surprise that they started in China.
We used to say that for Japan too. We used to laugh at China’s TD LTE and claimed that our FDD LTE is the best tech route, now they lead the world in 5G, pushing TD as the standard. Bigotry and discrimination never end well.
 
We used to say that for Japan too. We used to laugh at China’s TD LTE and claimed that our FDD LTE is the best tech route, now they lead the world in 5G, pushing TD as the standard. Bigotry and discrimination never end well.
To be fair to the original poster, China still hasn’t resolved its IP law enforcement issue. Or its numerous consumer safety issues (particularly concerning heavy metals). Until those issues are resolved, I don’t think China can really escape the shadow of the negative reputation of the Made in China label.

The Japanese-Chinese comparison isn’t a great one, either, since Japan very quickly moved upmarket. (A better comparison might be with the manufacturing trajectory of South Korea or perhaps Taiwan. LG is now a major global brand, and Foxconn a major manufacturer, while Taiwan and South Korea were broadly speaking, post WW2, places you made stuff when even Japan was too expensive.) Firms like Sony weren’t content to continue producing low cost clone electronics, instead they quickly took the lead on adopting and developing new media standards. Sony, in particular, was making well regarded audio equipment as early as 10 years after its first transistor radios, and the Trinitron tube was released around the same time. And firms like Seiko already had an established reputation for quality even before WW2. China’s manufacturing sector, on the other hand, is still notorious for cost cutting measures, though some firms have finally begun trying to establish a brand for themselves.

Of course, it doesn’t help that whatever indigenous firms China had pre-WW2 were eliminated when the CCP came to power, which means that China was devoid of firms like Seiko that already had established reputations. Without this and the other early missteps of the CCP, it’s likely China would have moved upmarket and developed sooner. It may have even done so before Japan, as the perception of China as a war ally would have helped it avoid much of the post-WW2 racism Japan had to deal with. (Of course, after years of negative propaganda directed towards the public regarding a foreign country, it shouldn’t be surprising that the public has a negative opinion of that country.)

All these issues combine to persist China’s reputation for low quality products. That’s not to say China can’t produce quality products, the device in my hand is a premium device manufactured in China. But manufacturers in China still engage in activities that cheapen the perceived value of their products, consumers have the ability to buy virtually any Chinese firm’s products in cheaper, unbranded variants through services like Wish and Ali Baba, and Chinese manufacturers have a tendency of sharing components and product designs between factories and firms. These tendencies result in considerable difficulty for Chinese firms to differentiate and establish their own reputations, which further contributes to the negative perception of the Made in China label. Why buy a Hotechs MP3 player over the exact same MP3 player under the Mymahdi nameplate, especially when the Mymahdi one is $4 cheaper? (This is an actual example I found on Amazon by searching for “MP3 player”, and the exact same player is available unbranded through Ali Baba.) It really comes off feeling like the choice between one supermarket’s house branded cereal or another’s, neither of which tastes as good as the national brand’s version of the same product. China’s reputation will rise as its brands’ reputations rise (see Japan and South Korea), but China’s brands’ reputations won’t go anywhere until they begin producing differentiated, high quality products. Case in point, why buy an OPPO watch when I’m 100% sure the exact same watch (also compatible with this app) is available unbranded from the factory through AliExpress?
 
To be fair to the original poster, China still hasn’t resolved its IP law enforcement issue. Or its numerous consumer safety issues (particularly concerning heavy metals). Until those issues are resolved, I don’t think China can really escape the shadow of the negative reputation of the Made in China label.

The Japanese-Chinese comparison isn’t a great one, either, since Japan very quickly moved upmarket. (A better comparison might be with the manufacturing trajectory of South Korea or perhaps Taiwan. LG is now a major global brand, and Foxconn a major manufacturer, while Taiwan and South Korea were broadly speaking, post WW2, places you made stuff when even Japan was too expensive.) Firms like Sony weren’t content to continue producing low cost clone electronics, instead they quickly took the lead on adopting and developing new media standards. Sony, in particular, was making well regarded audio equipment as early as 10 years after its first transistor radios, and the Trinitron tube was released around the same time. And firms like Seiko already had an established reputation for quality even before WW2. China’s manufacturing sector, on the other hand, is still notorious for cost cutting measures, though some firms have finally begun trying to establish a brand for themselves.

Of course, it doesn’t help that whatever indigenous firms China had pre-WW2 were eliminated when the CCP came to power, which means that China was devoid of firms like Seiko that already had established reputations. Without this and the other early missteps of the CCP, it’s likely China would have moved upmarket and developed sooner. It may have even done so before Japan, as the perception of China as a war ally would have helped it avoid much of the post-WW2 racism Japan had to deal with. (Of course, after years of negative propaganda directed towards the public regarding a foreign country, it shouldn’t be surprising that the public has a negative opinion of that country.)

All these issues combine to persist China’s reputation for low quality products. That’s not to say China can’t produce quality products, the device in my hand is a premium device manufactured in China. But manufacturers in China still engage in activities that cheapen the perceived value of their products, consumers have the ability to buy virtually any Chinese firm’s products in cheaper, unbranded variants through services like Wish and Ali Baba, and Chinese manufacturers have a tendency of sharing components and product designs between factories and firms. These tendencies result in considerable difficulty for Chinese firms to differentiate and establish their own reputations, which further contributes to the negative perception of the Made in China label. Why buy a Hotechs MP3 player over the exact same MP3 player under the Mymahdi nameplate, especially when the Mymahdi one is $4 cheaper? (This is an actual example I found on Amazon by searching for “MP3 player”, and the exact same player is available unbranded through Ali Baba.) It really comes off feeling like the choice between one supermarket’s house branded cereal or another’s, neither of which tastes as good as the national brand’s version of the same product. China’s reputation will rise as its brands’ reputations rise (see Japan and South Korea), but China’s brands’ reputations won’t go anywhere until they begin producing differentiated, high quality products. Case in point, why buy an OPPO watch when I’m 100% sure the exact same watch (also compatible with this app) is available unbranded from the factory through AliExpress?
The reason is quite simple. China had to do a civilization reset after WWI and it wasn’t completed until 1970 when Deng came to power and did that reform and opening up. Modern China is only started since the year 1970. This is the year China de facto transitioned from a communist country to a socialist country. They had no education system, no educated labor force, no food, no aids and no diplomatic relations. They were and still are under export restrictions that Japan and Taiwan are not subjected to. China can’t go out and buy an ASML EUV machine like TSMC can. China can’t learn or buy advanced US technology or products Like Japan can. That slowed them down considerably. That’s why you see the Chinese everywhere around the world pay such important emphasis on their children’s education. They have to do it all alone, from basic research to applied research, to engineering, to product design, to manufacturing engineering, to assembling, to logistics, and to recycling. They can’t buy up US technology or collaborate with US companies in advanced technology sectors. So, they had to cover the whole spectrum of technology. That’s difficult, for any one country to do. We can’t do it in the US. If we are cutoff, like how we cutoff China, we may not have made it. We just don’t have enough STEM people to be self sufficient. China has more advanced learners than we have learners. That’s why they stumbled along the way, but basically still kept up. They are still learning, but soon they will graduate. With things like Make in China 2025, and their 5-year, 50-year, 100-year plans, they out strategize us. We only think in 2 or 4-year terms, elections and mid-terms.

A huge part of China’s economy is not for private profit and enrichment, like infrastructure, mining, utilities, power, oil, gas, telecom, airlines, rail, sea shipping, medical care, pharmaceuticals, k-12 education, universities, space industry, military industry, and etc. You can see that their system is more efficient and doesn’t funnel public tax payers money into the pockets of the few.

Imagine building a road and don‘t need to let the company who build it make even a dime on the project.

Imagine providing rural broadband internet and 5G access not because its profitable to do, but because of human rights and equality of access. Even Canada has obligatory service requirements for companies like Canada Post, Bell Canada etc.

China is still very young. Kids who grew up at least middle class (born 2003+), and the wealthy western educated generation (born 1990+) only entered labor market for only a few years. That are the real driving force, and they will be formidable competitors.

An Ivy educated Chinese kid is not gonna make cheap copycat products. Not only that, they are not clueless like their predecessors are about how the game in the West works. They understand American markets, they understand geopolitics, they understand the laws and regulations. They will become China’s future industry and political leaders. They are mostly STEM oriented people too, not lawyers and other soft majors.
 
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