Cyanogen Now Valued At $1 Billion

Cyanogen began its life with rather humble beginnings. The company started off by providing users an Android ROM that was, in many respects, a noteworthy contender for the crown. In fact, many said that it was a far superior alternative to what was being offered by Android OEMs.

The CyanogenMod community can assist you in changing your current Android OS to something with more flavour.

Cyanogen was also a relatively vanilla Android experience, which was not clogged up by intricate animations, unnecessary apps that people never use or user different interfaces.

Since the origins of Cyanogen, the company has come a very long way. Reports from financial expert Forbes revealed in a report that they have managed to raise a massive $80 million in funding from their latest round of investments.

According to the Forbes report, the investors have included some pretty large names in the tech industry, such as Twitter, Qualcomm, Telefonica, and media tycoon Rupert Murdoch. Due to this interest the value of the firm has reached the $1 billion mark. No doubt you’ll certainly agree, this is a very long way from when the company first began.

Just what is it that makes Cyanogen such a valuable investment? It appears that Google’s dominance with the Android platform is of concern to some. Take these scenarios for instance; what if Google were to make the decision to begin charging to license the Android OS? Or what if the search engine giant decided to stop making it open source?

According to Peter Levine, a partner with Andreessen Horowitz, people’s worries are not unfounded: “App and chip vendors are very worried about Google controlling the entire experience.”

The CEO of Cyanogen, Kirt McMaster, added “In a perfect world the OS should know I use Spotify for music. I should be able to talk to the phone and say ‘Play that song’ and the f—ing song plays with Spotify. It doesn’t do that today.” McMaster has expressed frustration with Android before now, but the company’s success did branch from Android to start with.

[Image via technobuffalo]

SOURCE: Ubergizmo