OnePlus lays off Europe employees less than two weeks after OnePlus 8 launch
OnePlus launched its latest flagship phones, the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro, less than two weeks ago, but the Chinese phone maker is now laying off employees in regional offices throughout Europe, according to a report from Engadget.
It does not appear that the layoffs are coronavirus-related; rather, OnePlus appears to be dramatically downsizing offices in UK, France and Germany, with reductions in headcount as high as 80 percent for some offices. In some offices, there are just three employees, the report says.
Engadget reports that offices in Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands were not affected, as OnePlus sees those areas as more promising growth markets. As such, Helsinki is now going to be the new European HQ for OnePlus, the report states, with the prior operation being based mostly in London.
This may have been a long time coming; OnePlus models in the UK only work on one carrier, the international provider Three, and the company hasn’t had strategic relationships with other carriers that operate in the UK for quite some time.
“Europe is a very important market for us and has been since the beginning of OnePlus,” a company spokesperson told Engadget. “We’re doing some strategic restructuring in Europe, and in fact are even hiring in the region.”
Earlier today, OnePlus’ longtime US-based public relations manager, Eric Zarshenas, announced on Twitter he would also be departing the company, in an apparently unrelated situation:
1/2 Some personal news. After over 4 years and 10 product launches, the OnePlus 8 Series launch was my last at OnePlus.
When I joined OnePlus, a few frantic weeks before the OnePlus 2 launch, we were a scrappy upstart doing our best to create phones in a very crowded space.
— Eric Zarshenas (@Masoud_Z) April 16, 2020
OnePlus launched its latest flagship phones, the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro, less than two weeks ago, but the Chinese phone maker is now laying off employees in regional offices throughout Europe, according to a report from Engadget. It does not appear that the layoffs are coronavirus-related; rather, OnePlus…
