UnderCurrent is excited to reveal that its second favourite technology palindrome — after Sonos — will soon be coming to Australia.
Oppo will be officially launching itself onto the Australian market on Tuesday 2 September 2014 at a media event in Sydney.
Founded in 2004 in Guangdong, China, by current CEO Tony Chen, Oppo specialises in smartphones and is the self-described “second most profitable mobile phone company in China”. In the past, Oppo has also manufactured and marketed Blu-ray players, MP3 players, LCD TVs and eBooks, though only smartphones are currently listed under ‘Products’ on the company’s global website. In the United States, Oppo still markets Blu-ray players and headphones.
“Mark your diaries to be among the first to hear all the news from one of the leading mobile phone brands across APAC as they begin their Australian journey, and get hands on with the products for the first time locally,” reads the invited that popped into Proper Journalist’s inbox this afternoon.
Heretofore, Oppo has only been available to Australians via online ordering.
UPDATE: Oppo Blu-ray players are distributed locally by International Dynamics and “are available in over 100 stores across Australia and New Zealand”, according to commercial manager Sam Encel. UnderCurrent was slightly confused by Oppo’s global site only directing visitors to an online store.
Encel said Oppo’s entry into Australia will only have a positive impact on International Dynamics’ distribution of its Blu-ray players.
“We’re excited about Oppo Mobile coming to Australia; it’ll do great things for the brand,” he said. “We’re actually working quite closely with them and will be displaying Oppo AV products at the mobile launch and there are some other collaborations in the pipeline.”
UnderCurrent’s most respected rival hack Campbell Simpson once imported an Oppo Blu-ray player and acclaimed it in a 4.75-star review.
From the sparse information UnderCurrent has gleaned regarding Oppo’s debouching in Australia, it appears that only the latest smartphones, such as the Find 5, Find 7 and N1, will be released. Oppo compensates for its impecunious smartphone sobriquets by providing for a panoply of capricious reviews. Chris Velazco from Engadget said the Find 7 had “powerful specs, an impressive screen and a fast charging system”, Joshua Vergara from Android Authority littered his broadly positive review with adjectives such as “astounding”, “amazing” and the slightly less effusive “capable”, while Aloysius Low at Cnet demurred, calling the Find 7 “boring compared to its competitors”.
UnderCurrent can’t hard wait to get find out for itself what Australia will make of Oppo!