Never gone among with OPO and their PR machine. As a resident in China they've never sold out here or come close to that.
The 16gb has always been on open sale. The 64gb Sandstone had always been available on bi-weekly 'flash' sales which are nowhere near as 'flash' as they'd like you to believe. I've bought three between August and October. This remains the case. Heck, I can order the super 'limited/rare/sought after' bamboo edition right now if I wanted to. It's on open sale and has been since they emailed me about the 'time limited low stock' availability last week.
Basically few people appear to know about it, or do know about it and just don't want it. There are at least 4-5 similarly priced/specced options here so demand is nothing like what the rest of the world. All that means they could easily satisfy more non-Chinese orders if they wanted to. But they choose not to.
Isn't it strange that it's supposedly ultra rare in China, needs an invite system elsewhere, but they can still prep a launch in India? They have capacity alright but are selectively controlling the supply chain to various markets.
It's sad how the media fell for, and continually report, a 'shortage'. OPO don't have a marketing budget because they've got the non-Chinese press in the palm of their hands. And all those AMAs are laughable - everyone drinking the kool-aid.
As for CM doing the dirty on OPO, I doubt CM appreciated the finger pointing from the yellow band as fixable via software.
OPO no doubt want to use CM to get what they want and vice versa. It's just a case of who drops who first rather than if. Business is business. CM will find other HW makers and OPO will kick or their own ROM.
Sadly, given the success of their marketing ploy it's gonna be same again if they do another cost-price OP2. However, of they do a Nexus 6 and add margin, I can see an invite system and sales heading the same way as the Titanic.
