Closing out 2014, there was an abundance of news coming thick and fast surrounding three companies and their seemingly strained relationship. Cyanogen, OnePlus and Micromax. Most readers will know of the history, so without wanting to recap too much. In short, Micromax’s sub-brand ‘Yu’ launched their flagship device Yureka in India along with Cyanogen’s commercial operating system, Cyanogen OS. Round about the same time and due to popular demand, OnePlus had also begun to launch their flagship device, the OnePlus One in India. This is where the problem was, as Micromax had an exclusivity agreement in place with Cyanogen for the Indian market. Needless to say, everything ended up in a legal battle.
Well, since the influx of news we had a couple of months ago, the news slowed down somewhat and we had not heard too much since then. A couple of days ago Yu did launch their Yureka device and now Cyanogen’s Steve Kondik has decided to speak out about the entire situation. In an interview with Android Central (source link below) Kondik answered some questions about the situation. Kondik referred to Cyanogen’s position between the new OEMs as being “stuck in the middle” and suggested that the whole affair was simply a matter of mistiming “With each company, a short exclusivity was included in the agreements and we thought they were pretty straightforward“. Following on from this, Kondik did note that there was no malice on Cyanogen’s part with OnePlus stating “Micromax was a little more specific for the services we were providing, but it was never meant to be retroactive against OnePlus, and that’s where the problem came from“.
A lot of the accusations being thrown at Cyanogen recently have been that they moved to Micromax for monetary reasons. Kondik addressed this by stating that they were still a venture-funded company, adding “There’s still no focus on monetization“. There were also suggestions that these moves by Cyanogen had effectively led to them ‘selling-out’ and stepping away from their original concept intentions. Again Kondik was keen to redress this sentiment by stating “This is the most important thing I hope people understand – we’re still in it for the same reasons that the project got started around.” Further adding that it would be “completely idiotic” for them to move away from their original concept.
In terms of the future of Cyanogen and OnePlus, Kondik was limited in what information he did provide. That said one telling snippet from the interview stated “I’m not sure our long-term visions are necessarily converging based on the conversations we’ve had“. If you are a OnePlus One owner and worried about what it might mean for you then Kondik attempted to reassure those owners by stating “but we’re still going to support the [One Plus] One. We’re still behind them for this device, with plans to ship (Lollipop) next month“. Although, the same sentence did end with “I have no idea what the future holds beyond that.”
So there you go. The latest on the Cyanogen/OnePlus/Micromax saga and straight from Cyanogen. What do you think of the information Kondik provided? What are your thoughts on the situation? You can read the interview in full by clicking the source link below. In the meantime, let us know what you think.