Apple, Samsung... Oppo? Dick Smith adds third kiosk vendor

Chinese smartphone vendor Oppo is making a big play in the Australian market, announcing that its flagship R7 handset will be a retail exclusive to Dick Smith.

While Dick Smith began selling Oppo’s range of budget smartphones earlier in July, it is now rolling out 150 dedicated Oppo kiosks inside its stores.

Oppo isn’t the first smartphone vendor with a kiosk in Dick Smith. Samsung began opening kiosks in 2013, while newly acquired Apple reseller Mac1 opened its first dedicated kiosk in the Macarthur Dick Smith store in May.

Oppo kiosks allow customers to get a hands-on demo with the smartphone range. Dick Smith director of buying and marketing Rodney Orrock said it was making a huge investment with Oppo.

“Our strategy is to look for new products that are just coming in to the market,” said Orrock. “Oppo is still a growing vendor, but they’ve seen our reach and deals with carriers like Telstra, Optus and Vodafone, and they want as much reach as quickly as possible.

“Oppo is in a very sweet zone for our customers. People are buying more handsets more frequently, so we see Oppo as an alternative to the major providers in the smartphone space.”

Oppo is also partnering with Optus to sell the R7 on a $40-a-month plan, including 500MB data and unlimited calls and texts to standard national numbers.

Oppo entered the Australian market in September via online sales only, and partnered with Allphones as its first retailer three months later. 

Oppo director of marketing Michael Tran said brand awareness is the biggest challenge in Australia over the coming months. “The kiosks are about getting Australian to actually give Oppo a go.

“The specs are comparable to any other high-end device and I think we have a very bright future ahead of us. Opening up the Oppo kiosks is just one of the first things we’re doing, which Apple and Samsung also did.”

While Oppo’s smarthphones range from high-end to budget, the mid-range R7 and R7 Plus are being pushed as the flagship handset for Oppo. Priced at $449, the R7 is powered by a Qualcomm octa-core 1.5 Ghz processor, 3GB RAM and runs Android 4.4. It also has a 5-inch screen at 1920x1080 resolution. The R7 Plus has the same specs with a slightly larger screen at 6 inches.

“At the moment, everything we’re focusing on is the R7 and R7 Plus,” said Tran. “We’re thinking of the young demographic, it’s all about the camera and the style, we take fashion into account as well, our tagline is style in a flash so that’s a main selling point.”

Founded in 2004, Oppo began producing portable media players, TVs and Blu-ray players. In 2008, it began manufacturing smartphones with the Find 7.