Cyanogen Inc. lays off a quarter of its staff – update

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Cyanogen Inc, the developer of the Android ROM Cyanogen OS, is making a round of layoffs. It would concern 30 of the 136 employees. It is possible that the startup will focus its attention on the development of applications in the future.

The news initially came out on Friday through sources from Android Police and was subsequently confirmed to Re/code. The layoffs would take place at locations in Seattle, Palo Alto, but also the smaller offices in Lisbon and India. The last two could possibly be closed completely. Many of the layoffs are said to have fallen on the open source side of the project. More layoffs may follow in the near future.

One of Android Police’s sources even speaks of the company shifting its focus from OS development to app development. However, this is not certain at the moment. The company has been developing an app package for some time that should serve as a replacement for similar Google counterparts. Think of your own mail app and a dialer.

Last year, the company secured an investment of 73 million euros to compete with Google. It is even supported by Microsoft, among others. The problem of Cyanogen Inc. may not be due to a lack of popularity of the open source ROM CyanogenMod. Cyanogen Inc. monetizes its variant of the Google operating system by convincing manufacturers to deliver Cyanogen OS on their smartphones. However, this has not succeeded in large numbers. The OnePlus One is a well-known example of a phone that came with an operating system from the company, but OnePlus later abandoned that. Furthermore, there are not many examples of phones that run on Cyanogen OS from the factory.

Update, 15:29: Steve Kondik, Founder and Leader at Cyanogen Inc. assures users that CyanogenMod, the free open source Android ROM that can be downloaded for many different devices, is in any case not at risk.

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