Cyanogen Inc. has announced a deal with Microsoft to begin shipping the Redmond-based company’s increasingly-ubiquitous mobile apps on its Cyanogen OS later this year.
Upcoming builds of Cyanogen OS will have apps like Skype, OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook and Office pre-installed, similar to the deal Microsoft struck with Samsung earlier this year.
In a press release, Cyanogen Inc.’s CEO, Kirt McMaster, said, “This exciting partnership with Microsoft will enable us to bring new kinds of integrated services to mobile users in markets around the world.” In an email to The Verge, Microsoft said it will start offering “native experiences” on Android, which likely means more explicit integrations with its services such as making Bing the default search engine.
Microsoft has been expanding its presence on Android in the past year, bringing phone and tablet versions of its Office suite to more devices, sprucing up its OneDrive service, as well as bringing a native version of Outlook, which has proven to be excellent.
Cyanogen OS is built on top of open-source Android, but the company has publicly decried the amount of control Google has over the platform. McMaster recently said that he wants to “take Android away from Google.”
[source]Cyanogen[/source]
