Why BBK killed OxygenOS: The Brutal Maths of Running Android Skins in the AI Era

OnePlus recently retired OxygenOS, the software that made people fall in love with the brand in the first place. From now on its phones will run ColorOS, the same software Oppo uses. The fans are upset, and I understand why. But the reason this happened is not betrayal. It is money.

Running a second version of Android has become expensive, and OnePlus no longer sells the kind of phone that can pay for it. That is the whole story and the rest is detail.

I have been covering OnePlus since the early days, when buying a OnePlus One meant asking a stranger on a forum for an invite code. Having a whole lot of context of the history and timeline, I might know what actually changed.

What OnePlus Announced

On 16 July, OnePlus confirmed two things. It is pulling out of the US and Europe, and all its phones are moving from OxygenOS to Oppo's ColorOS. The change is global, and that includes India. OnePlus India has said its business here is unaffected, but that means sales and service will continue, not that OxygenOS survives on Indian phones.

Oppo's other brand, Realme, is doing the same thing. Realme UI is also being replaced by ColorOS. So this is not really a OnePlus decision. It is a decision by their shared parent company, BBK Electronics, which owns Oppo, OnePlus, Realme, vivo and iQOO.

Why the Software No Longer Earns its Keep

Here is the part most people miss. A phone's software used to be simple and cheap to build. It was a home screen, some icons, a settings menu and a small team to keep it running. That is all OxygenOS was in the early years, and it was cheap enough to keep around just because fans liked it.

Software is not that anymore. A modern version of Android has to include an AI assistant, a deal with Google to run Gemini, a camera processing system, live translation, writing tools, and testing across every phone the company sells. Building all of that once, for ColorOS, already costs a fortune. Building it twice, for two versions that are almost identical underneath, makes no sense to anyone signing the cheques.

OnePlus and ColorOS have actually shared the same underlying code since 2021. For years the only real difference was the name, the fonts and the wallpapers. So retiring OxygenOS does not remove much. It just stops OnePlus paying twice for the same thing.

Why Now, and Not Two Years Ago

The timing comes down to one thing that is squeezing the entire phone industry right now: memory prices.

The memory chips inside every phone have become nearly four times more expensive since September 2025, according to Counterpoint Research, and they may rise even higher. In a budget phone, memory now makes up almost half the cost of the parts. Every brand has raised prices, and Indians are simply buying fewer phones. The market shrank 10 percent in the April-to-June quarter, the worst such quarter in six years.

When your costs are rising this fast and your sales are falling, you cut anything you can live without. A second copy of Android that you are already invested in and probably nobody would miss is an easy cut. But there are still a few loyalist of the brand who would not appreciate losing the skin they once bought the brand for.

OnePlus is Not the Premium Brand it Used to Be

There is a harder truth underneath all this. OnePlus stopped being a premium brand a while ago.

It once ruled the top end of the Indian market. In 2018 it held 40 percent of premium phone sales, and by 2021 three out of every five premium phones sold here were OnePlus. I wrote those stories, and the lead felt like it's here to last.

A retailer revolt in 2024, when thousands of shops stopped stocking the brand over poor margins and slow warranty service, badly hurt it. The green line display problem hurt its reputation further. By 2025 its overall share had fallen to 2.4 percent. Early this year it shut most of its stores and its India chief resigned.

But the number that explains the OxygenOS decision best is this one: the mid-range Nord now makes up two-thirds of everything OnePlus sells in India, and it is reportedly planning an even cheaper phone under Rs 20,000. The premium brand quietly became a budget brand. And once you are selling cheaper phones, you cannot justify spending premium money on your own software.

The Uncomfortable Part

You might conclude from all this that software just does not sell phones anymore. Except it clearly does.

Nothing, the brand run by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, grew 105 percent in the same quarter and was India's fastest-growing brand. Google's Pixel was the fastest-growing name in the most expensive segment of all. Both sell clean, distinctive software and are thriving in exactly the space OnePlus used to own.

Their phones sell for other reasons too, of course. Nothing has sharp design, aggressive pricing and an IPL sponsorship, and the Pixel has its cameras and Google's hyper-personalized software ecosystem. But it is hard to look at these numbers and say software has stopped mattering. What actually happened is narrower. OxygenOS stopped being special for OnePlus, years ago, and once it did, there was no reason left to keep paying for it.

What OnePlus has Left

If the software is no longer the reason to buy a OnePlus, what is? Good hardware, fast performance, battery, cameras and price. That is a fine list, and it is also the exact same list Oppo, vivo, Realme and iQOO are selling. Counterpoint now counts Oppo and its sister brands together at more than a quarter of the whole Indian market, and inside a family that big and that similar, it is fair to ask why you would pick the OnePlus over the near-identical phone next to it.

What we are really losing is not OxygenOS, it is the variety and more than that the identity. Phones used to feel genuinely different depending on the brand, and that difference cost money that companies were once willing to spend. Rising costs and the race to add AI have turned that spending into a luxury. Fewer companies can afford it now, and the two that still do are the two growing fastest.