Pete Lau: Co-founder and CEO of OnePlus

Pete Lau, or Liu Zuohu, was born on May 5, 1975, and is currently the CEO of OnePlus, a smartphone company he co-founded together with Carl Pei. 

Pete Lau: CEO of OnePlus, the man behind OnePlus' success 

Pete Lau was born in Hanchuan, Hubei, China in 1975. He obtained a degree from Zhejiang University in 1998. He's known for co-founding OnePlus, and previously worked at Oppo.

Oppo era

Back in the day, his attention to detail became quite famous in the tech world, and he's known to spend a lot of energy on perfecting the details of products. Later on, he became head of marketing before he was given the position of Vice President at Oppo. 

As a Vice President, Lau was responsible for bringing CyanogenMod (it's discontinued now) which is an open-source Android-based operating system, to Oppo N1. 

After working for the company for over a decade, Lau resigned from Oppo in November 2013 and then went ahead to co-found OnePlus with Carl Pei, who was one of the people he worked together with at Oppo.

OnePlus era

OnePlus' motto to Never Settle and always strive for better

In December 2013, just one month after resigning from Oppo, Pete Lau founded OnePlus together with Carl Pei. The company was first created with the aim to bring higher quality products for a more affordable price, a strategy that later made the company known for its 'flagship killers' - high-quality phones with lower prices. When OnePlus was first founded, it had only 6 employees. 

The company's first smartphone, the OnePlus One, was announced in April 2014 and was available for order in June of the same year. The smartphone was being sold online and sported CyanogenMod as its operating system. The phone was manufactured in Oppo's facilities given the fact that OnePlus didn't have its own manufacturing facility. 

Lau's attention to detail was quite noticeable in the OnePlus One, and the phone was widely praised by tech reviewers. On top of all of that, it had a very attractive price which was more-or-less half of the phones with similar specs' prices at the time. 

The phone had expectation-breaking success. In December 2014, the OnePlus One had recorded nearly 1 million sales. 

Later on, OnePlus switched from using CyanogenMod to OxygenOS as an operating system for its phones. 

From 2015 on, OnePlus continued to grow and expand the areas where its phones were available. The company has since released a plethora of phones, from the highly-successful OnePlus 5 all the way up to their latest flagship, the OnePlus 11. 

The OnePlus 11, released in the beginning of 2023

The prices of the phones have been increasing as the popularity of the brand has been rising, but the company still maintains high quality and regularly checks in with OnePlus fans in the OnePlus Community. 

Lau's company now also offers budget-friendly devices as well. One notable example is the OnePlus Nord series, which started back in 2020. The OG OnePlus Nord was highly praised for its performance, display, and fast charging coupled with a very attractive price. 

Since then, the company's released the OnePlus Nord 2 and the OnePlus Nord 3. 

Pete Lau still works as OnePlus' CEO to this day and continues to lead the company to its well-deserved success and expansion. The company now also has a foldable device in the works, a phone that's reportedly going to be called OnePlus Open.