[glkgdswdg]

They weren't targeting users, they were targeting manufacturers (pay them and they'll do the software).

It actually makes sense as a business model, but they messed up by backstabbing their first customer (after contracting with OnePlus, they signed an exclusive contract with MicroMax that no other company can sell cyanogenos in India, which, had OnePlus not made OxygenOS, would have killed them.)

It was probably the stupidest move they could have done, as no company would trust them again, and lost them all the goodwill they had.

[vacri]

Crazy. Imagine if Microsoft have given a single vendor exclusive rights to sell their operating system in a major market. We wouldn't even know their name today, except as a historical curio.

[lkrubner]

In the mid 1980s, Microsoft did offer exclusive rights to someone to sell DOS in Japan. The seller did a bad job. The deal had to be unwound after 4 years.

[vacri]

I was unaware of that - I stand corrected :)

[user837387]

>>It was probably the stupidest move they could have done, as no company would trust them again, and lost them all the goodwill they had.<<

There are plenty of people in the business world that screw so many people, businesses, banks and they still manage to continue doing business. I wish there was a name for it. Madoff is an example: even after people warned others about his business being a scam he still continued doing business until he collapsed on his own. Nobody brought him down, he did it to himself.

The big lie is what they teach us as young kids, that honor actually means something.

Power is might, and if you have it nothing else seems to matter, virtually always.

[danudey]

Screwing other people is possible when you are at (or near) the top of the pile. When you're at the bottom, it just gets you killed.

If you screw your 100th customer, you have 99 customers who are pretty likely to write it off. If you screw your first customer, it's a warning to others.

[aswanson]

There are a fair amount of internet companies that started off as goodwill projects, though.