At present, the waves of global technological change and industrial upgrading are superimposed, and Chinese enterprises are accelerating the pace of going overseas, transforming from scale expansion to high-value growth, and becoming an important driving force of the global economy.
Recently, at the ‘OPPO Thinking and Sharing’ global high-end dialogue forum, IDC, an international analyst firm, released a report entitled ‘Riding the Global Wave, Terminal Manufacturers’ Overseas Expansion and the Blueprint for the Future’. The report shows that in recent years, the global smartphone mid- and high-end market share has contracted, but Chinese manufacturers are further influencing the global high-end market, and OPPO will be ranked No. 1 in the global mid- and high-end market share in 2024 ($450-$500); moreover, in the past ten years, OPPO’s cumulative market share is No. 4 in the world and No. 1 in China.
Jiping Wang, Vice President of IDC Global and China, shared the global mobile phone market trends at OPPO’s Sense & Share session
At the meeting, Zhou Qiren, economist and professor of economics at the National Development Institute of Peking University, Shi Zhan, professor at the Institute for the History of Global Civilisation at Shanghai International Studies University, and Chen Wei, vice president and editor-in-chief of Zhenghe Island, together with Duan Zhuhui, senior vice president of OPPO, and Zhang Zhouchuan, president of OPPO’s overseas marketing service, focused on the topic of ‘2025 Globalisation – New Journey and New Breakthroughs’. -New Journey and New Breakthroughs’, they discussed the way of Chinese enterprises to go overseas, and tried to provide new ideas for the globalisation of Chinese enterprises.
Benefiting the world with technology, creating a new paradigm for Chinese enterprises’ globalisation
Zhou Qiren, Economist and Professor of Economics at Peking University’s School of National Development, at OPPO’s Thinking Session
During the exchange, Zhou Qiren believes that Chinese enterprises have entered a new stage of ‘going out’: from the initial local expansion of ‘going out of the village to the village, and going out of the town to the town’ to the current cross-border and cross-cultural global layout, Chinese enterprises have entered a new stage of ‘going out’: from the initial local expansion of ‘going out of the village to the village, and going out of the town to the town’ to the current cross-border and cross-cultural global layout. The connotation of ‘going out’ has undergone profound changes. Zhou Qiren believes that the early product export model has been unable to meet the needs of enterprise development, the deeper challenge lies in overseas factories and global operations. He suggested that the key for enterprises to ‘go overseas’ should shift from pursuing ‘more customers’ to seeking ‘better customers’, and go overseas for the sake of enterprise health, rather than share or scale.
‘OPPO has a deep understanding of the idea of going out from the village mentioned by Prof Zhou.’ Duan Youhui recalled. Duan want to Hui recalled, ‘Our starting point is Wusha Village, Dongguan Changan Town, 20 years ago, a hotel in the village slogan reads “Let the world understand Wusha, let Wusha to the world” – today, OPPO and many companies from the Today, OPPO and many other enterprises from Wusha Village have truly realised this vision.’ As for the concept of ‘healthy overseas’, he further explained: ‘The health of an enterprise is not only reflected in its market share or scale, but also in whether it can synergise with the development of society, employees and shareholders. Globalisation can only be sustainable if there is a win-win situation for all parties.’
OPPO Overseas Marketing Service President Zhang Zhouchuan said, OPPO was founded at the beginning of the integration of global resources, targeting the international market, it can be said that OPPO is ‘born global’. But the original intention of OPPO globalisation is not to make money, it is to uphold the mission of ‘technology for people, in order to improve the world’, ‘in order to improve the world’ ‘world’ is ‘Globalisation’. We endeavour to bring real value to local consumers, employees, partners, and even the development of local industries and society, and achieve healthier and longer-term development.
Zhang Zhouchuan, President of OPPO’s Overseas Marketing Service, shares OPPO’s experience of globalisation
After 16 years of going to sea, OPPO has developed from a single product going to sea to a comprehensive sea of products, technology, brand, culture and even industry chain. The business covers more than 70 countries and regions around the world, and the contribution of overseas business accounts for nearly 60%.
Shi Zhan believes that the so-called ‘de-globalisation’ mainly exists at the political level, but it prompts enterprises to accelerate the international layout. ‘Political barriers precisely force enterprises to go out, while maintaining close ties with China’s supply chain, forming a more resilient new model of globalisation.’ At the same time, he also emphasised that Chinese companies going overseas can not only effectively cope with the international pressure brought about by excessive trade surpluses, but also promote local employment and consumption capacity. Taking OPPO’s practice in Indonesia as an example, its localised operation has not only boosted local employment and consumption levels, but also opened up new markets for Chinese consumer goods.
Taking user demand as the origin, moving towards global high-end with good products and services
At the meeting, everyone agreed that the fundamental foothold of enterprise globalisation is the customer. As Zhang Zhouchuan said, there is no standard answer to globalisation, the user is the only answer. It is this user feedback that makes OPPO even more convinced that it must do a good job of design and quality. He stressed that ‘OPPO products, must be fine products, even if it is a low-priced mobile phone, but also to make a sense of high quality.’ Whether it is the overall globalisation strategy, market segmentation strategy or localised operation strategy, OPPO is committed to providing consumers around the world with a superior experience that is closer to their needs.
OPPO adheres to the ‘Glocal’ globalisation strategy (i.e. globalisation of strategy and localisation of operations), whereby each country’s locals form a global Glocal to ensure efficient synergy of global resources and a flexible response to regional market demands. In more than 70 national markets, OPPO is not a direct copy of the domestic experience, often a completely new start, a new way of playing, the strategy of each country’s market redo again, in order to flexibly adapt to the user needs and culture of different markets. In terms of localised operations, OPPO adheres to the whole chain of localised deep ploughing from product innovation, production and research and development, sales and service to brand marketing, with each link designed to better serve users.
Duan Youhui, Senior Vice President of OPPO, shared the progress of OPPO AI.
Duan Yuhui said that with the spillover of China’s scientific and technological innovation capabilities in AI, precision manufacturing and other fields, OPPO is providing global consumers with more innovative, high-value quality products. Especially driven by applications such as DeepSeek, AI is moving from the niche to the masses, gradually realising global universality; OPPO also believes that AI is not about showing off, but about letting users really use it.
Therefore, OPPO always focuses on real user scenarios to do AI, through the system-level AI capabilities, to create a personal butler who can do, ask, and remind the user, to achieve a more understanding of the user’s intelligent interaction and services, exclusive personalised services, professional knowledge Q&A and creation. Overseas, OPPO has also customised its AI strategy for local users, for example, OPPO has launched the ‘AIGC Studio’ function in India, which uses a large model to generate personalised pictures, which is very popular with local users, and strives to benefit nearly 100 million users worldwide by the end of 2025. In addition, OPPO also actively open collaboration with Deep Seek, OPPO mobile phone access to Deep Seek models more than 70. the next step is to plan for all models to join Deep Seek.
Zhou Qiren pointed out that the essence of the product is B-side, and the service is the only C-side. The core of the future manufacturing industry is service-oriented. The product is only the carrier, the real competitiveness lies in the service ability.AI will accelerate this trend – for example, the value of the mobile phone will depend on how much intelligent service it can provide, not just the hardware itself. The essence of this change is the upgrading of the manufacturing industry from ‘selling products’ to ‘selling services’. To order food, for example, AI can not only provide information (information), more active service. After understanding your preferences, a ‘help me order lunch’ can complete the whole process. This represents a fundamental shift: information technology is evolving from ‘delivering information’ to ‘scheduling reality’. The future of mobile phones and other terminal equipment depends on whether it can become such a service hub.
Shi Zhan said, AI can give answers, but will not ask questions. In the future, those who can ask questions will be able to use A well, and those who can’t ask questions will be controlled by A. The ability to ask good questions is a prerequisite for AI. The premise of the ability to ask good questions is that you have to have seen enough different things, the more things you have seen, the more different, the more you can find those problems, so that you can go to ask good questions.
At the end of the forum, Chen Wei concluded that the opportunity is contained in the flow, and firmly believe that in the future there will be a number of excellent enterprises like OPPO rooted in the local community and serving the global community, serving quality customers around the world.
