Late last week, OnePlus announced a surprising development in their partnership with CyanogenMod, Inc., supplier of one of the operating systems used on the OnePlus One smartphone. Just was OnePlus was preparing to release the device to the market in India on December 2nd, it was announced that CyanogenMod had inked a deal to be the exclusive provider of an operating system to Micromax for their new Yu line of phones, which will be a competitor for both OnePlus and Xiaomi, in the Indian market. The exclusive nature of CyanogenMod's new partnership means OnePlus owners will not receive future updates to the operating system.
OnePlus is already working on a solution even though the initial units to be shipped will come with the CyanogenMod system. One option for OnePlus is to expand the use of Color OS, supplied by Oppo, and used by OnePlus for units sold in China. OnePlus also formed their own Android development team recently. OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei indicates the company will invest additional resources in development of their own Android build based on Android Lollipop. The in-house version of an operating system is expected to be ready within the month and a consumer-ready version will be ready by February.
Technically the exclusivity deal only impacts units sold, or possibly used, in India. However, OnePlus clearly believes they had a partnership in place with CyanogenMod and this latest agreement represents a betrayal. Thus, it is not a stretch of the imagination to envision OnePlus moving all of their devices around the globe off of the CyanogenMod operating system in favor of other options.
Does this move by CyanogenMod change your view of the company or the desirability of the OnePlus One?
source: OnePlus
OnePlus One is impossible to get anyway, so…!