Cyanogen Unveils Modular OS, Former COO Takes Over as CEO

Cyanogen, as expected, has announced changes in its leadership under which Kirt McMaster, Cyanogen's Co-Founder, will now be the new Executive Chairman. The company's former COO Lior Tal will now be taking on the role of CEO, and will also join the Board of Directors. Steve Kondik, Cyanogen's Co-Founder and CTO, will also be taking on a new role as Chief Science Officer. Apart from major leadership changes, Cyanogen also announced an all-new Modular OS Program - an expansion of its Mod initiative.

With the latest Modular OS Program, Cyanogen is moving away from developing the full Cyanogen OS stack and will instead provide "dynamic modules and MODs" which Android manufacturers can implement into their own custom ROMs.

(Also see: Cyanogen's Mod Platform to Enable Deep App Integration in Cyanogen OS)

"In keeping with our common mission of creating a truly open, collaborative and unrestricted Android platform, we are today announcing a new Cyanogen Modular OS program. It is designed to achieve the original objective of an open and smarter Android without the limitations of requiring the full Cyanogen OS stack and individual device bring-ups," noted new CEO Lior Tal.

(Also see: Cyanogen 'Attempting to Take Android Away from Google', Says CEO)

The company has also expressed plans to tap into Artificial Intelligence cloud services under its new expansion plans. According to Cyanogen, the new Artificial Intelligence cloud services will able to learn usage patterns throughout the operating system and will also allow to interact with smartphones in contextual way. Unfortunately, Cyanogen has not detailed future plans for its CyanogenMod open source project.

In its blog post, Tal talks about CyanogenMod open source project as a successful initiative. "It led to tens of millions of people flashing their devices with CyanogenMod's open source builds and its derivatives. The synergy between Cyanogen Inc. and the OSS community resulted in the launch of nearly twenty mobile devices with Cyanogen OS, which have been used by millions of people," he added.