A legal dispute regarding royalties and intellectual property leads Oppo to review its positioning in Europe.
It is these hours the decision of Oppo which literally stripped its German website of any references to its products.
“No product information is currently available on our website. Some of the products are also not available in Germany, including Reno 8 Series, Find N2 Flip“, is the text of a laconic I notify which appears on the home page of the official site intended for German users.
The company assures that it will continue to deliver support and that customers will be able on the one hand to use its devices without any restrictions and on the other to receive the updates for all supported devices. However, Oppo’s move seems to be an unequivocal confirmation of the abandonment of the German market.
The reason is certainly linked to the dispute initiated by Nokia against the Chinese company whose ownership (BBK Electronics) also manages well-known brands Vivo, Realm e iQOO.
Nokia had accused Oppo of not paying the le royalty against the use of intellectual property related to a wide range of technologies for the management of networks 4G and 5G. For its part, Oppo underlined that it has an agreement in place with Nokia but that upon termination of the same, the company that today primarily deals with networking would have proposed an exaggeratedly onerous tariff.
Doing the math, the Chinese company – whose market share on a global scale it is estimated at around 10% – he evidently believed that the German market was not a priority and that the amount requested by Nokia could significantly erode the proceeds.
The unfavorable sentence for Oppo it was issued by German judges in August 2022; a similar decision was taken against Vivo in April 2023. In both cases, the court decided to exclude the devices from the sale from the entire German territory. Vivo has pointed out that Nokia would not have fulfilled its obligation to offer a license on “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” terms by reserving the right to appeal the court order.
The fact is that now Oppo seems to want leave Germany instead continuing to offer, as always, its catalog in the other countries of the European Union, including Europe.
It must be said that Nokia is launching further disputes in France, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden: the situation is therefore in progress and will have to be kept an eye out for the repercussions it may also have on the market. Oppo, in the end, is also an appreciated brand in Europe which holds one of the most prominent positions after Samsung, Apple and Xiaomi for number of smartphones sold.
The idea is probably to “keep it going” also counting on the significant differences in terms of legislation between one legislation and another.