A report from a Strategy Analytics, shows that Apple and Samsung are the top smartphones vendor in the world in the fourth Quarter of 2014. Surprisingly, Apple and Samsung sold the EXACT same amount of devices in the Q4,2014 which is 74.5 million each.

For the year as a whole, Samsung remained at the top with total shipments of 317.2 million, which translates into 24.7% share of the market. This compares to 2013, when the company's overall smartphone shipments stood at 319.8 million, giving it a 32.3% market share.

Samsung continues to face intense competition from Apple at the higher-end of the smartphone market, from Huawei in the middle-tiers, and from Xiaomi and others at the entry-level," the report said, adding that the company "may soon have to consider taking over rivals, such as Blackberry, in order to revitalize growth this year.

Source

Cyanogen CEO Kirt McMaster outlined a combative take about Google and its control over the Android operating system, and a defiant vision for Cyanogen to build an Android operating system without Google being in the picture.

McMaster started his talk with, "I'm the CEO of Cyanogen. We're attempting to take Android away from Google."

He further explained that Cyanogen is developing a version of Android which would be open at every level. Something that other developers and partners could utilize to create their own tightly integrated services. Think of stuff that would be able to compete with Google Now, and that paints a broad picture.

"We're making a version of Android that is more open so we can integrate with more partners so their servicers can be tier one services, so startups working on [artificial intelligence] or other problems don't get stuck having you have to launch a stupid little application that inevitably gets acquired by Google or Apple. These companies can thrive on non-Google Android," explained McMaster.

Is Cyanogen concerned that Google might not think too highly of this strategy? No because it sees its future as being Google-free. McMaster says Cyanogen will have its own app store in 18 months. Of course, there is nothing to stop Google from impeding Cyanogen's plans either.

We are not sure how Cyanogen intends to achieve this vision, given how dependent it currently is on Google and its services. Even open source projects need some center mass for an ecosystem to interconnect with and seek guidance from, the Android Open Source Project and Ubuntu are good examples of that.

Source