[Case Study] Oppo Spent 22,000 Crores for Marketing Strategy in India

OPPO is the Chinese Electronic firm based in Guangdong. Guangdong is the province in China located on the south china sea coast. Oppo majorly deals in smartphones, Blu Ray players, and mobile accessories. The company was launched in 2004 in China. Oppo has their divisions in 11 different countries including India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Philippines, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Srilanka, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam where each of the division is making smartphone according to respective regional needs.

Products by Oppo:

SmartPhones: Oppo is heavily into the smartphone market, with smartphones for all the price range starting from Rs.8000 to its flagship phone worth Rs 27000. Oppo smartphones are known for their camera quality and its Selfie range of phones are very popular among the youth.

Blu-Ray Player: Oppo started manufacturing Blu-ray disc in 2010. BDP-83 was its first Blu-ray player followed by BDP-93 featuring 3D compatibility and 2 HDMI output. Later Oppo introduced more advanced feature Blu-ray players like BDP-103, BDP-105.

Accessories: In 2014 Oppo released its high-end headphone and amplifiers. The flagship PM-1 and PM-2 headphones have been heavily promoted in the audio community and got positive reviews from the critics.

Innovations in Oppo:

Oppo has always been very innovative. It has provided many different innovations in competition with its rival brands. Here are few of them.

• Oppo Finder smartphone was the thinnest smartphone of its time.
• The Oppo N1 was the first smartphone with rotating camera.
• Oppo F3 Plus was the first phone to launch dual-lens primary camera
• In February this year, Oppo has revealed a camera on prototype phone which can zoom into an image 5 times with affecting the image quality. Experts believe that this technology can change the mobile photography forever.

Marketing and Branding:

Where most of the mobile phones are going digital for the brand endorsements and marketing. Oppo is betting on offline for their retail and marketing strategies in India. Oppo with its Sister company Vivo has spent around 2,200 crores on marketing result to that you can see Vivo and Oppo’s billboard all over the major cities in India. Oppo is also the official sponsor of Indian National Cricket team and managed to get their name on Team’s Kit from 2017- 2022 which include the 2019 world cup in England and 2020 T20 world cup in Australia. Oppo and Vivo marketing budget in India has not only exceeds it rival like Xiaomi but also beats big players like Samsung and LG.

The company vision is to overtake the sales of Samsung in the next one year in Rs 6000-20000 smartphone segments which cover 78% of market share. They have a target to expand their sales by 25% this year. The company has also approached to small smartphone retailers to shift their focus from Samsung to Oppo and Vivo by offering them 5-10%  of extra margin on each phone than Samsung.That is the reason why you only see Oppo and Vivo phones in small retailer shops in India.

Oppo has also hired stars like Hrithik Roshan, Sonam Kapoor and Deepika Padukone for their brand endorsements in India.

Oppo’s Market Share in India:

According to a Singapore based research firm “Canalys”, Oppo has the third biggest market share in India with 9% of India,s overall smartphone market in last quarter of 2016. Although the market share came down to 8.6% in the first quarter of 2017. The company recently announced to double its manufacturing capacity in India and also looking to boost its online sales.