OnePlus One launches in India as Chinese startup looks to expand reach

Dubbed the "2014 Flagship Killer" the OnePlus One smartphone won critical acclaim for combining cutting-edge technology with a budget price.

OnePlus, the Chinese company which was launched less than a year ago, is now looking to expand its business significantly by launching its smartphone in one of the world's fastest growing markets for smartphones - India.

The OnePlus One has gone on sale exclusively on Amazon.in costing 21,999 Rupee (£226, €285, $355) for the 64GB version of the phone.

Just as in the other 17 countries where the OnePlus One in on sale, customers looking to buy one of the smartphones will need an invite, which have proved difficult to obtain in many cases.

Invites are given out by the company itself for subscribing to its newsletter, following its social media accounts or joining the OnePlus forums. Amazon is also running a competition in India to give out invites and anyone who purchases a OnePlus One will be given three invites to give away to whoever they please.

The launch in India went ahead on Tuesday despite an announcement by the company on Monday that its partnership with Cyanogen would not be extended to the sub-continent.

Cyanogen develops a popular forked version of Android called CyanogenMod and this is the software being used on all OnePlus One devices to date.

However, last week Cyanogen told OnePlus that it had granted exclusive rights to use CyanogenMod in India to budget-smartphone maker Micromax.

OnePlus published a blog post to apologise to its Indian customers on Monday, announcing that it would be developing its own operating system based on Android 5.0 (Lollipop)

The smartphone market is a hugely competitive one, particularly at the budget end with Samsung and home-grown Micromax dominating, but challenges are coming from Chinese upstart Xiaomi as well as less well-known companies like Karbonn and Lava.

OnePlus will be hoping its combination of top-end specs with a relatively budget price will attract customers in India, just as it has elsewhere in the world. However, as it expands the company will need to judge just how fast it grows as the issues with customer service it has suffered so far will only increase as more and more people use its phones.