I don’t know if you recall, but New Delhi High Court ordered Xiaomi to stop importing and selling their handsets in India because they allegedly infringed on eight of Ericsson’s patents. Ericsson said that they tried contacting this Chinese OEM on several occasions, but never managed to get through to them, in other words, they didn’t want to listen according to Ericsson. Xiaomi said something completely opposite to that, but the company did say that they’ll work with Ericsson in order to sort out any issues regarding patents and continue doing business in India considering they sell a ton of smartphones there and situations like this might seriously hurt this company’s profits. It was also reported that Xiaomi won’t be able to do business in China until at least February 5th when the hearing is set I believe.
We received some new info though, it looks like the New Delhi High Court has now granted this Chinese smartphone manufacturer a permission to import and sell their devices in the country until January 8th, but only the devices running on Qualcomm processors. This is actually great news for Xiaomi considering they were planning to launch the Redmi Note (4G) sales in India and they’ll be able to do that now. It remains to be seen how will the recent injunction affect Xiaomi sales though, I believe not as many people will be interested in their devices considering the recent turn of events, but that doesn’t mean they won’t sell a ton of Redmi Note’s though. The company won’t be able to sell the MediaTek-powered Redmi Note’s which they were selling prior to the ban though, so that might be a problem for them. The company is allowed to continue selling the Redmi 1S handsets and of course start selling the Redmi Note (4G) Snapdragon-powered units, as I already mentioned.
These are certainly good news for Xiaomi, although this injunction will definitely hurt the company financially. It will be interesting to see what happens next, stay tuned, we’ll definitely keep you informed. Do you think Xiaomi and Ericsson will sort these patent issues quickly?