The YU Mobiles smartphone brand is apparently living on borrowed time, as its parent company Micromax reportedly doesn’t see any value in maintaining it. If true, this would mean that the brand will be discontinued after only launching four smartphones over the course of its short lifetime that started in 2014. It has been close to a year since the last smartphone from YU Mobiles, the Yunicorn, was launched. According to recent reports, some existing and a handful of ex-employees of the company have confirmed that YU Mobiles will be discontinued by Micromax in the near future. Following that, the employees and other units under YU Mobiles will be merged with Micromax. It’s currently unclear whether the company will reassign all of the current employees working at the YU Mobiles unit, but more details on the matter should be available shortly.
One particular reason that could have contributed to YU Mobiles’ early demise is the closure of CyanogenMod, the operating system that powered the handsets released under its brand. There have been no updates from CyanogenMod since December 2016 after the Android-based operating system was discontinued by its creators. This might have created concerns about the handset’s security among consumers, which might have contributed to Micromax’s reported decision to discontinue the brand. Even if the Indian consumer electronics manufacturer is truly planning to shut down the brand, the company will likely be looking to clear what little stock it has left in the coming months, meaning that it might opt to organize massive sales in the coming months. The YU Mobile brand ultimately failed to produce devices that are significantly different to those provided by Micromax, industry sources claim, adding how that has been the company’s primary goal when launching the brand that ended up not justifying its existence.
Regardless, there has been no official confirmation from Micromax or YU Mobiles concerning the demise of the smartphone brand, so it remains to be seen whether this relatively young handset venture truly ends up being scrapped in the near future. An update on the situation is expected to follow in the coming months, presumably by summer.