The close corporate ties between OnePlus and Oppo have never been much of a secret, at least to anyone who studies the nitty-gritty of the mobile business-to-business world. Despite keeping a very distinct identity, they're both part of the same parent company, and have been more open about the resources that they share for the last six months. Today OnePlus dropped a bit more of the pretense, and said that it's going to "further integrate" with Oppo.

The change was announced on the official OnePlus forum, as most OP company news is, by CEO Pete Lau.

As many of you know, last year I took on some additional responsibilities to oversee product strategy for both OnePlus and OPPO. Since then, we have integrated a number of our teams together with OPPO to better streamline our operations and capitalize on additional shared resources. After seeing positive impact from those changes, we’ve decided to further integrate our organization with OPPO.

According to Lau, OnePlus and Oppo will continue to operate as separate brands, including product lines and OnePlus's signature announcement events. So on the surface, things probably won't change very much from the consumer viewpoint, though you may start to see hardware and software features developed by either company show up in the phones of the other.

OnePlus started as a "rebel" manufacturer, focusing on a single product line that offered flagship features at a cutthroat price. Its first phone had a lot of obvious crossover with Oppo hardware, and it ran on a similar, corporate-developed version of the CyanogenMod ROM, just like the Oppo N1 from the previous year. While the ancillary parts of the business were variously interesting and cringe-inducing, it maintained competitive hardware for several years. But ever since the introduction of the OnePlus Nord, and diversifying its primary OnePlus phone line to hit both larger and smaller price points across many worldwide markets, OnePlus has started to look ... well, more or less like every other phone manufacturer, with the accompanying ups and downs.

Now that the ties between OnePlus and Oppo have been further formalized, and apparently someone high up at parent company OPLUS has blessed the union, we might see even more crossover in hardware and software. It's worth noting that Realme is also a part of that corporate family, though there's no indication that it will be getting the same treatment.