Subscription news source, The Information, is reporting that Microsoft, Samsung and Yahoo are among the companies looking into the purchase of Cyanogen. Cyanogen is a newly formed software company that has its roots in the custom Android ROM community. Steve Kondik (Cyanogen) is the founder and chief brain behind Cyanogen. Its been an interesting journey for him and his team and equally interesting to watch them grow from xda-developers into a full running business.
CyanogenMod, the software distributed by Cyanogen, has quietly built a dedicated fan base of thousands of developers who contribute code to it, and supporters believe it’s poised to become a full-fledged alternative to Google Android. The company took in $30 million last year from venture firms Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures and Benchmark Capital, in addition to Tencent, the Chinese Web services giant. The startup says it is now looking to raise a big “Series C” round, and a person briefed by Microsoft said the startup recently had a sit-down with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
It’s easy to see Samsung’s interest in Cyanogen but Microsoft and Yahoo do baffle me a bit. Microsoft has been pushing Windows phone pretty hard and has invested a good amount of time and effort into it so buying an Android based software company is intriguing. Yahoo is another anomaly, could Yahoo be planning their own smartphone based around Cyanogen? Right now this is all up in the air but one thing is for certain – when a major company is keeping an eye on a startup, you better watch it too. We’ll keep our ear to the ground for updates and try and report here. What do you think of Microsoft and others eyeballing Cyanogen? Let us know in the comments below or on Google+, Facebook and Twitter.
[button link=”https://www.theinformation.com/Obscure-Android-Software-Firm-Attracts-Google-Rivals” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: The Information[/button][button link=”http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-Wants-to-Buy-Custom-Android-Build-Maker-Cyanogen-457013.shtml” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Softpedia[/button]Featured image modified from phandroid.com.
Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
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