Cyanogen raises $7 million to build a better version of Android

Cyanogen, makers of popular software based on Android that extends the abilities of smartphones, is making a bid for the mainstream. The four-year-old company, which began as a one-person side project, said today that it has raised $7 million from Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures. The goal is to vault past Blackberry and Windows Phone to become the third-most popular mobile operating system, after traditional Android and iOS. And the company is already closer than you might think.

CyanogenMod, the company’s free open-source replacement firmware, has more than 8 million users, CEO Kirt McMaster says. But that counts only users who have elected to share data with Cyanogen, he says, estimating that the true number is two to three times that amount. "There’s always been lot of talk around who’s going to be the third dominant mobile computing platform," says McMaster, who previously co-founded Boost Mobile. "Windows Phone would probably be number three now. If you look at what our actual user base is, we might be equal to or greater than that." Microsoft estimates Windows Phone’s current market share at 4 percent.