Cyanogen’s CEO Kirt McMaster is no stranger to making his voice heard. It was only a few weeks back when his comments suggested that Cyanogen wants to divorce android from Google. Not to mention, he was also noted recently commented on how Samsung could not build a decent OS if they tried. Well, McMaster is back in the headlines again today after a recent interview with Business Insider (source link below) where he talks about how he sees the mobile and platform landscape shaping up over the years to come.
The big headline from the interview is that McMaster sees Samsung as likely to fall in terms of overall android dominance within the next 5 years. In this respect, McMaster likened Samsung’s predicted situation to that of Research in Motion (RIM) and Nokia. Both companies saw a rather quick drop in their dominance from their heyday and in this respect, McMaster suggests Samsung may go through similar troubled times. This is due to what seems to be the recent rise of local OEMs starting to form a dominance in their respective markets. Think Xiaomi in China, think Micromax in India, think Blu in South America. The logic is that these upcoming manufacturers know their market better, can offer more locally-relevant products and at a more locally relevant price. According to McMaster, this will inevitably eat away at Samsung’s worldwide dominance “The tier one OEMs like Samsung are going to be the next generation Nokias in the next five years. They’re going to be slaughtered”. Further adding “It could get pretty bad pretty damn quickFurther adding “It could get pretty bad pretty damn quick“.
In terms of platforms and the ‘divorcing’ comments, McMaster also looked to further clarify Cyanogen’s intention by noting that as Google increases in its widespread usage, there will be room for other smaller android derivatives to generate substantial user bases too. McMaster predicts Google’s android will inevitably attain somewhere in the region of 5 billion users in the years to come. As such, the other derivatives have the ability to generate a few hundred million users fairly easily. McMaster does include Cyanogen in among these derivatives “There’s no doubt we’re going to be successful and have a couple of hundred million users“. As for divorcing Google, McMaster made it clear that this is not the end-goal. Instead, it is simply to widen the market to allow other third party app developers to get in on the action. In short, offering Google users a choice in the future “What we’re saying is, on our platform, let’s open it up. Let the user have a choice. Choose whether they want to use Google Maps or Nokia Here“.
You can read the interview in full by clicking the source link below but in the meantime what do you think of McMaster’s comments? Are Samsung going to suffer so much in as little as 3 to 5 years? Let us know your thoughts.