BBK Electronics Corporation is a Chinese company specialized in electronics, including MP3 players, Blu-Ray players, television sets, and mobile phones. BBK Electronics Group is the parent company of three popular smartphone brands – OnePlus, OPPO Mobile, and Vivo. It is also the owner of imoo, a relatively new and small smartphone brand.
You may not know it, but three forward-looking smartphone brands (and a more recent one) in the market are owned by, and operate under, a company called BBK. The BBK Electronics Group is a Chinese corporation specialized in electronics such as television sets, mp3 players, digital cameras and smartphones. It markets smartphones under three major brands that you may be already familiar with and a much smaller one that you may not.
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BBK Electronics Group: A Brief History
The company was founded in 1995 and has its headquarters in China. The company produces a wide range of consumer electronics, but it did not start manufacturing smartphones until 2008 when the first OPPO phones hit the market.
BBK Electronics Group is the parent company to three popular global smartphone brands, so you have most likely heard of them. See the list below.
BBK Electronics Brands
- OPPO Mobile: OPPO was founded in 2004 and as at 2018, it was one of the world’s largest smartphone brands. OPPO Mobile is the largest mobile brand that BBK is parent company to. Surprise? You probably thought that OnePlus was the largest. Well, you thought wrong.
- Vivo: Vivo was founded in 2009. It is also in the list of the top 10 smartphone brands in the world.
- OnePlus: OnePlus was founded in 2013. Outside of China, it is the most popular BBK brand online and has a strong following because of its initial reputation for providing flagship smartphones for much less than the competition did.
- Imoo: Imoo is new and a still a small brand. It was started in 2016.
Similar To The Car Industry
Interesting bit of news; right? This is similar to the situation in the automobile industry, in which just a handful of corporations own the lot of car brands that you know. If you are interested, have a look at this breakdown of which corporations own the different car brands.
Will we see this sort of consolidation grow and develop more in the smartphone industry over time? Will we see more corporations own multiple smartphone brands? Only time will tell.
In the meantime, you now know that the parent company of OnePlus, OPPO Mobile, and Vivo is a corporation called BBK Electronics. Yes; BBK owns those brands.
Availability of OnePlus, OPPO, and Vivo smartphones
OPPO Mobile, Vivo and OnePlus have been huge successes in their home country, China, as well as other countries in the Asian region. These include: Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Philippines . You won’t find many of their phones elsewhere. BBK brands are doing extremely well in India.
However, OnePlus, has become popular around the world because for years it offered flagship specs at mid-range prices and is available for purchase online. This has made it a darling of smartphone lovers around the world. Its catchy tag line, “Don’t Settle”, has become a mantra among fans and enthusiasts.
Lastly, imoo is still largely available only in China and so mostly unknown to the rest of the world.
BBK Electronics rules the Chinese smartphone market, and on the global scene, the statistics put BBK firmly in 3rd place globally, though Huawei is ahead of the individual BBK brands. 2022 Update: Huawei has since fallen back after the US government embargo.
For a brand that is relatively unknown, BBK Electronics is a force to be reckoned with in the smartphone world. With two top brands under its umbrella, it is one of the world’s largest smartphone groups, if not the largest.
The death of BBK Electronics Corporation
In April 2023, BBK electronics Group was deregistered. The group’s brands, OPPO, OnePlus, Vivo, iQOO, Realme, imoo, and BBK Education Electronics, continue in operation.