Foxconn joins the Cyanogen investment party Chinese iPhone manufacturer Foxconn has joined Twitter, Qualcomm, Telefónica and others to swell Cyanogen’s round C funding to $110m. Neither company is saying how much Foxconn is investing, but before the announcement the round C stood at $80m. The money will go to build on the Cyanogen platform – which riffs on Android – “ …
If the Foxconn (or Samsung) consortium use it in just one product family, then CyanogenMod could easily become larger than WinPhone.
Just a tease that this might happen was enough to attract venture capital. This is the opportunity that the Canonical Ubuntu Phone was hoping to get.
The bigger issue is that Google is having a design, quality, and leadership crisis involving Android that is motivating partners (and Microsoft) to fork the platform.
CyanogenMod liberated my HP Touchpad. I had hoped they would be the end user's friend against the bloat, control and obsolescence that Samsung and others build into their phones and tablets.
My impression is that all this dosh hasn't got the latest Android on a wider range of devices. The new paymasters must presume its going to cost them less get Android tailored to their devices than employ their own teams. Is CM now just an outsourced contractor?
Is it only going to get worse? Lollipop for the Touchpad now comes from individual amateur enthusiasts. Bit like the old poor CyanogenMod.
Android is repeating the Windows 95 cycle of vulnerabilities and ad hoc patches. This would not have been necessary if the OS designers had been willing to learn from past market misery.
Android should run a generic kernel maintained by Google, and Google should be able to replace these kernels at will. Custom vendor changes should be limited to kernel modules that will survive upgrades.
Userland should also receive upgrades at will. If a critical bug is found in /system/bin/toolbox, the capability should exist for immediate deployment of a patched binary.
Vendor binaries should be limited to specific locations (i.e., /system/vbin) which the vendor can control.
I run a Samsung Galaxy Note 2, and Verizon has locked my bootloader to a signed kernel that is vulnerable to Towelroot. I exploited this to wipe and load the Alliance rom distro, but any .APK that I load that obtains shell access could also become root. Locked bootloaders carve Android insecurity in stone. Samsung, Google, and Verizon must cease sacrificing user security for vendor control, and should they refuse, then they deserve a thorough beating at the hands of a judge.
Google, Samsung, and Verizon have chosen to be negligent in their stewardship of the mobile UNIX network that they have deployed, and they have refused to allow more capable hands to solve the problems that they have created. At the very least, they deserve our contempt.
"This would not have been necessary if the OS designers had been willing to learn from past market misery."
The Microsoft Corporation Incorporated (NASDAQ MSFT): A wholly controlled asset of the US government, directly answerable to its CIA/NSA in all matters of (in)security, national interest, "intellegence", etc. by means of its "secret" "courts" and the odd legislative/"regulatory" arm-twist.
The Google Corporation Incorporated (NASDAQ GOOG): A wholly controlled asset of the US government, directly answerable to its CIA/NSA in all matters of (in)security, national interest, "intellegence", etc. by means of its "secret" "courts" and the odd legislative/"regulatory" arm-twist.
Who were you suggesting is the slow learner?
Nevertheless, completely agree with your conclusion. Suppose access to the vast and sdoopid US market is probably sufficient inducement to play along.
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