Re: Meh
I keep pondering how Cyanogen is going to make money - their other objectives are irrelevant if the business itself is not viable.
I'm sure there's a handful on these forums who've played with it, or even use CyanogenMod as their primary phone OS but we aren't representative of the vast majority of people in user-land who will never install an app, much less an OS. And we, techie types aren't a big enough market to keep Cyanogen in business. So where is their money going to come from?
Your mention of China got me thinking though. I was in Thailand last year and there's a huge pile of cheap, Chinese-made phones to be had. Mostly knock-offs of the popular, western brands - Samsungs and iPhones and HTCs and the like - which look the part of whatever they're proporting to be but at quarter (or less) of the cost of the real deal (and a quarter of the specs too).
Now I'm thinking to myself, these phones will never get an update from their manufacturer. Could Cyanogen sell their OS to the people who buy one of those phones? $5 per year to keep your phone updated with the latest CyanogenMod. I don't know but I think it's a market where Cyanogen's product is easily superior and would be well worth paying for.