CyanogenMod as the third mobile OS?

I think it’s kinda interesting what the new company Cyanogen is doing with CyanogenMod.

At first I thought it was a terrible thing to turn a free, open source custom rom into a commercial product, but now I can really see the potential by doing so.



The third OS

It’s a way for Cyanogen to compete against the other big mobile operating systems, iOS and Android. And yes, I know CyanogenMod[1] is Android, but what I mean is, an OS that either could come pre-installed on devices, or be able to be installed on nearly all devices through Google Play Store.

If they are doing everything right here, I think they could be more popular than Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS, and become the third biggest OS. We have already seen the manufacturer Oppo announce that you can choose CyanogenMod as your OS pre-installed on their new Phablet the N1.

And my guess is that other manufacturer, like Huawei, ZTE will do the same as Oppo, having CyanogenMod as an alternative for their devices. I think it even could be possible that such a big and open manufacturer like Sony could offer CyanogenMod on their devices.

Give back the Android experience to the user

I have often said that I wish the manufacturers could stop skinning their UI’s so much, and do more light changes to the pure android experience. I think what Samsung is doing with their TouchWIz UI is very wrong, they are adding more and more of their own features to hide the real android and Google, so that their UI looks like their own OS instead. The Android[2] experience is gone.

I have also talked about how Google is changing Android, they are releasing more and more apps, services and features as external apps available in Google Play Store, so the pure Stock Android experience could be installed from the Play Store. That is a way for Google to give the Android experience back to the user.

But maybe is what Cyanogen is doing an option to all this? An alternative for us to get the Stock Android experience on any device we buy, making any phone a “Nexus” phone with clean UI and fast updates.

If CyanogenMod will still stay free and open is another question though, I prefer Android free, but if they can make this happen with a pleasant experience, easy to install, and keep the price low, then I am sure they will succeed.

  1. CyanogenMod (pronounced sigh-AN-oh-jen-mod), is a customized, aftermarket firmware distribution for several Android devices. It’s based on the Android Open Source Project, CyanogenMod is designed to increase performance and reliability over Android-based ROMs released by vendors and carriers. CyanogenMod also offers a variety of features & enhancements that are not currently found in these versions of Android. See more posts tagged CyanogenMod.  ↩

  2. Android is a Linux-based mobile operating system developed and distributed by Google in conjunction with the Open Handset Alliance. See more posts tagged Android.  ↩

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