In a letter addressed to its Indian users, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei has said that Cyanogen Inc. will not be supporting CM11S in the Indian variants of the One. This is because Cyanogen has granted exclusive rights to Cyanogen OS in India to another company. 

This is a very surprising move from Cyanogen Inc., especially after it has worked with OnePlus to launch the One in 17 various regions of the world. It has also worked tirelessly to roll out software updates to improve the overall usability of the One and add new features to it. While the global version of the OnePlus One running CM11S will continue to get updates from Cyanogen for another year, the Indian version will not be receiving any OTA updates from them.

We can’t explain Cyanogen’s decision because we don’t fully understand it ourselves. — Carl Pei

OnePlus plans on launching the One in India with CyanogenMod 11S, but has already started working on its own “system” that will be based on Lollipop. It will be stable, fast, lightweight and will come without any bloat. The company expects to release the first build to the community next month, with a production ready build for mass roll out to be available in February. The system will offer an experience that will be similar to stock Android and will not come with any unneeded customizations. The company also commits to two year of support for the OnePlus One from the date of releasing the first community build for the device.

To make things easier for its Indian users, the company will set up “stations” where it will meet its fans face to face, and help them in flashing their One to their own system. It will also offer online instructions for users who prefer to install the system on their own.

It was only earlier this month that Micromax announced an exclusive partnership with Cyanogen Inc. in India for its upcoming smartphone to be launched under the “Yu” brand.