The OnePlus One smartphone can be sold in India after all. Just days after a court ruled that OnePlus would have to stop selling the phone in that country, the Delhi High Court reversed that ruling.
At issue is the phone’s software: the OnePlus One ships with Cyanogen OS, a custom version of Android developed by Cyanogen Inc.
Cyanogen signed a deal with smartphone maker Micromax granting that company exclusive rights to sell phones with Cyanogen OS in India.
The earlier court granted an injunction that meant that OnePlus would be unable to import phones to the country until it had replaced Cyanogen OS on those devices with a different operating system. But now it looks like OnePlus can go ahead with its original plan to ship phones that run Cyanogen software and offer its own custom version of Android as a software update in the future.
So why did the Delhi High Court overturn the earlier ruling? The judge presiding over the case figures the OnePlus One is a high-end device while the first Micromax phone with Cyanogen software (the Yureka) is a low-cost phone. In other words, they don’t really compete with one another and there’s room for them to co-exist.
OnePlus will probably still try to replace Cyanogen OS with its own Android ROM for Indian phones in the coming months though, since Cyanogen has already stated it has no plans to support Indian versions of the OnePlus One with software updates.
In case you’re curious, emails submitted as part of the court case don’t paint the folks at Cyanogen in a particularly positive light.
via GizChina