Earlier today, Cyanogen Inc. announced that it had received an additional $80 million in its Series C funding round and that it will use it to acquire more talent as well as for OS development.
While Cyanogen Inc. is one of the most beloved companies in the Android community, its CEO, Kirt McMaster, is not well-liked by many. Last time, McMaster showed his hatred for Google over Android, and said that Cyanogen Inc. aims to create a Google-free version of Android.
Now, in an interview with Forbes, Kirt says that Cyanogen Inc. “puts a bullet in Google's head”. The company wants to leverage the support of industry giants such as Qualcomm, Twitter and other suppliers, to create an Android that will be much better than the current Google Android version.
The company is also in talks with Miami-based smartphone vendor Blu to create a Google-free Android running Cyanogen OS. Blu CEO Samuel Ohev-Zion says in the interview that while most of the details are still being finalized, he hopes the device will end up with the Amazon AppStore, the Opera browser, Dropbox for cloud storage needs, Spotify for music and Nokia's Here Maps.
“When these other apps run on the phone, most of the time they have better performance than Google's apps», says the CEO of Blu, Samuel Ohev-Zion.
To raise the money, Cyanogen Inc. aims to create revenue-sharing agreements with third-party apps and developers, who will benefit from integrating their application into the operating system. In fact, Cyanogen is also ready to share revenue with OEMs that sell their smartphones with a very low profit margin.
