Android CyanogenMod team raise $7m to found a company

by Mark Tyson on 19 September 2013, 16:35

Tags: Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), PC

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The folk behind the Android smartphone ROM replacement CyanogenMod have announced that they have incorporated to become a fully-fledged company; Cyanogen Inc. The team has raised around $7 million in backing in order to make this dream become a reality. The CyanogenMod ROM software will be relabelled as an “operating system” reflecting the scale of work done to create and maintain it.

The team and a dog

The serious business of transforming the group of hobbyist developers into a company really began in April this year when the fundraising was decided upon, big money backers lined up as partners and papers were signed. Since that time the CyanogenMod team “have been working tirelessly on what we think is the next mobile revolution”. The team has chosen today “to tell the world” of what they hope will be the future of the software project.

In a nutshell CyanogenMod’s history has been as an alternative Android ROM that smartphone users can install on their devices and gives a greater choice in the OS features and capabilities. It’s more open to user tinkering and can even provide a new lease of life to an otherwise moribund, neglected, not officially updated droid. I found this myself with an Android smartphone I bought several years ago, it never received a single official update to the Android OS it came from the manufacturer. However I managed to install a much newer, more fully featured and secure Android OS thanks to CyanogenMod team’s software.

Installing the mod currently requires a bit of technical jiggery pokery and is a little worrying with the warnings of ‘bricking’ your precious/expensive mobile always at the front of your mind. Thus one of the first efforts from Cyanogen Inc. will be an easy to use installer which “will be available on the Play Store in the coming weeks”. This new app will help simplify the current “hideous” and “daunting process for mere mortals”. The new installer promises to be both “easy and safe,” despite the aim of supporting “almost a hundred different devices”.

Simple and safe new installer app

Right now there are about eight million confirmed CyanogenMod users, the bulk of which are in China. Those figures only include people who chose the option to share such usage data, so the management team think the actual number of users could be triple that statistic.

As more than half of Android users are running and old version of the OS, for various reasons, there’s a lot of scope for user experience improvement on offer from Cyanogen Inc. However Google has opposed the CyanogenMod team in the past and issued a cease-and-desist letter as the team were bundling Google Apps. That challenge caused the user base to sky-rocket but it’s worrying that Google has been hobbling other user-friendly apps of late that stuck their toe in front of its efforts to maximise ad revenue from each and every user.

Cyanogen Inc is ambitious as a representative also stated that Windows Phone is in its sights and the team would like to claim official third place in mobile...



HEXUS Forums :: 12 Comments

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I found this myself with an Android smartphone I bought several years ago, it never received a single official update to the Android OS it came from the manufacturer. However I managed to install a much newer, more fully featured and secure Android OS thanks to CyanogenMod team’s software.
Same here - and then there's the matter of Androidifying stuff that was never going to get that OS, so prolonging the useful life of otherwise perfectly reasonable, but unsupported, hardware. In my case there's two HP Touchpads that are still very much in use thanks to Cyanogen. Heck, if they (Cyanogen) wanted to do a paid-for version of their OS fork for the Touchpad then I'll pay up.
As more than half of Android users are running and old version of the OS, for various reasons, there’s a lot of scope for user experience improvement on offer from Cyanogen Inc. However Google has opposed the CyanogenMod team in the past and issued a cease-and-desist letter as the team were bundling Google Apps. That challenge caused the user base to sky-rocket but it’s worrying that Google has been hobbling other user-friendly apps of late that stuck their toe in front of its efforts to maximise ad revenue from each and every user.
And therein lies my confusion. Cyanogen allows older/unsupported hardware to “do” Android, so surely it's in Google's interest TO allow Cyanogen rather than block them. After all, if Cyanogen is running on “millions of devices” then that's millions of possible victims, sorry “customers”, for Google's ad and other services. This strikes me as an Apple-like we-want-the-whole-cake dumb move on Google's part.
Cyanogen Inc is ambitious as a representative also stated that Windows Phone is in its sights and the team would like to claim official third place in mobile…
Hmm, I can't see that being a realistic proposition.
Not sure how they make much money off it. OK it may be popular among hacker types who want to tweak out their phone, but the mindset of that community is very much freeloaderish. i.e. no moolah. There are plenty of alternate images available for many phones not made by Cyanogenmod - I use one a non-CM on mine largely because while very clever I find it a complete mess.
Good luck Cyanogen, I started using their custom OS just because the battery life was so incredibly poor on my S3.

Since 10.2 I have gain a huge amount of battery life back. Although as you would expect with a custom OS, depending on the update my phone can behave a bit wierd/not respond etc, but with nighly updates there is a quick fix usually, download a newer or older version.
Lets be clear, Google havent been trying to stop them… poor press as the reason why they were sent those requests is because they were bundling in closed source applications I.E GAPPS or Google Apps, that is an entirely fair point for Google as its their choice who bundles in their software and they just want more control over the release of their ones,its easy to grab hold of the latest GAPPS and the only real GAPP you need is the playstore.

Good luck CyanogenMod, saved my life with the LG optimus 2x made it a brilliant phone :).
Rescued my Experia Pro from obsolescence long before Sony pulled their finger out and updated the platform. Joyously also doesn't have Facebook as a system app which you can't remove…