Cyanogen has shut down

Cyanogen is closing down. The ambitious startup that took an aim at building a better Android version than Google is out of the business. Every one of the staff members has been laid off along with its CEO and another co-founder. The startup is also shutting down its services and nightly software builds on the 31^st of December. Cyanogen stood on the foundations of reimagining mobile computing by giving power to the people to customize their mobile device and content experiences.

The news was announced in a blog post released on Friday. The open source project and source code are however available for people who want to build CyanogenMod personally. Owners of devices that run Cyanogen OS such as the OnePlus One now need to transition over to the CyanogenMod ROM. It is not a commercial product and is managed by the community of developers led by the co founder Steve Klondik.

The sad news of the company shutting down marks the end of their ambitious journey. The company aimed to put a bullet through Google’s head but the new transition says otherwise. It new approach will be more attractive to OEMs.

Cyanogen’s Modular OS program is trying to achieve the same objective of an open and smarter Android without limitations. However, there will be no need to acquire full Cyanogen OS stack and individual device bring-ups. In short, instead of killing Google it will adapt to living in a Google’s World.

Cyanogen fails to build better Android

Cyanogen’s software had always been a hard sell because it requires handset makers to ditch Android and Google services. There were political dimensions to it as well. OnePlus was Cyanogen’s largest partner but the agreement ended on a sour note after one device.

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Since, Cyanogen service is dying the new strategy revolves around unbundling Cyanogen OS. This would offer other conjunctions with regular Android builds and the stock service that Google provides. This new partnership will offer smart phone manufacturers more freedom and opportunity in introducing customizable Android smart phones. They will use different parts of the Cyanogen OS via dynamic modules and MODs with a ROM of their choice.

The closure of their services saves them more cost to make things more accessible and less of commitment for prospective partners.

Image via Android Authority