I don’t know if you recall, but Ericsson has sued Xiaomi back in December 2014. Why? Well, the China-based company has allegedly infringed on Ericsson’s patents. As the result of this lawsuit, Xiaomi was banned from selling certain devices in India. Not all sales were banned though, only part of the handsets Xiaomi was offering, the ones running MediaTek SoCs, to be exact. Anyhow, there are some new developments in this case, read on.
As a result of the injunction, Xiaomi’s handsets were stuck in India. Well, the New Delhi High Court has just allowed Xiaomi to ship back over 100,000 banned Redmi devices back to Hong Kong after the Swedish telecom firm Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson agreed to the agreement. The aforementioned Xiaomi-branded devices are currently lying somewhere in Flipkart’s warehouse waiting for the company to take an inventory and ship them back to Hong Kong, from where they were shipped to India. It remains to be seen what will happen with the general lawsuit, but at least the phones won’t sit in the warehouse any longer
Xiaomi has released a ton of devices this year, not only smartphones, but all sorts of smart gadgets. The company also plans to expand to other markets, and India is definitely in their plans. Xiaomi is currently selling their smartphones via Flipkart in India, while their accessories are available from the official webpage. Well, this Chinese smartphone OEM has said that they intend to start manufacturing devices in India, as part of the country’s ‘Make In India’ project, which many manufacturers are taking a part of. India’s Prime Minister has created ‘Make in India’ project in order to get manufacturers to assemble their devices in India, not only sell them. They’re offered all sorts of incentives in order to do so.
According to the available info, Xiaomi might start manufacturing their smartphones in India in Q3 or Q4 this year, the company still didn’t confirm when that might happen. Either way, stay tuned for any further updates regarding this lawsuit or Xiaomi’s business in India, we’ll report back as soon as some new info pops up.