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Time: 2016-07-23 10:17:52 UTC

Original URL: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/07/report-cyanogen-inc-to-layoff-20-of-workers-may-pivot-to-app-development/ [arstechnica.com]

Title: Cyanogen Inc. lays off OS development team

Suggested Topics by Probability (Experimental) : 18.8 mobile 18.8 OS 12.5 science 12.5 hardware 12.5 business 6.2 digiliberty 6.2 code 6.2 careersedu 6.2 careers

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Cyanogen Inc. lays off OS development team

Cyanogen Inc. seems to be in trouble. A report from Android Police [androidpolice.com] cites "several sources" that say the three-year-old [arstechnica.com] Android software house will be laying off 20 percent of its workforce. One source said the company would "pivot" to "apps" and away from OS development.

"Cyanogen" branding can be confusing, so here's a quick glossary before we get started:

The Android Police report says "roughly 30 out of the 136 people Cyanogen Inc. employs" are being cut, and that the layoffs "most heavily impact the open source arm" of the company.  Android Police goes on to say that CyanogenMod development by Cyanogen Inc "may be eliminated entirely." The community could continue to develop CyanogenMod, but it seems many of the core CyanogenMod developers at the company will no longer be paid to work on CyanogenMod.

Android Police even has a description of the firing process, which doesn't sound pleasant:

Layoffs reportedly came after a long executive retreat for the company's leaders and were conducted with no advanced notice. Employees who were not let go were told not to show up to work today. Those who did show up were the unlucky ones: they had generic human resources meetings rather ominously added to their calendars last night. So, everyone who arrived at Cyanogen Inc. in Seattle this morning did so to lose their job (aside from those conducting the layoffs).

When it started out, Cyanogen Inc. seemed to love getting the press riled up and unleashed some frankly arrogant statements. Cyanogen Inc. CEO Kirt McMaster once said the company was "attempting to take Android away from Google [theinformation.com]" and that it was "putting a bullet through Google’s head [forbes.com]." The company's original goal was to allow OEMs to outsource the OS development on their devices and ship Cyanogen OS instead of having to deal with the OS and updates themselves.

The highest-profile hardware company with which Cyanogen Inc. teamed up was OnePlus for the OnePlus One [arstechnica.com]. After that relationship ended with a messy breakup [androidpolice.com], Cyanogen OS was mostly relegated to a handful of no-name phones in India.

Cyanogen Inc. partnered with Microsoft [arstechnica.com] to bundle Bing, Skype, OneDrive, Outlook, and Office into Cyanogen OS. With no significant OEM deals to ship Cyanogen OS though, we can't imagine that partnership has been fruitful.

The future of the company, according to one of the report's sources, is "apps." This could mean the company's "Mod" platform, which is little more than a generic app store, or it could mean trying to monetize some of the apps that ship with CyanogenMod or Cyanogen OS. Across both of its OSes, Cyanogen Inc. has a custom Theme Store, Gallery, Dialer, Music player, Email app, and account system with remote wipe capabilities.

The future of Cyanogen Inc. looks murky right now. We'll let you know when we hear more.

               

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission