cyanogen branding 1

Cyanogen capped off a pretty great year this week with the launch of its new Yureka smartphone in India, and even managed to squeeze in a quick jab at one of its biggest rivals at the same time. Responding to a question about competing operating system, Cyanogen CEO Kirt McMaster bashed Samsung's long-delayed Tizen OS while playing up his company's own software.

"Samsung can't build a good OS if they tried," he said, making a not so subtle reference to the company's long-delayed Tizen operating system.

Here's the rest of the quote, which offers a bit of insight into Cyanogen's global ambitions:

At the end of the day the entire global value chain is optimized for Android. Cyanogen, from day one, has been about super-optimizing Android and taking it to another level. We're plugged right into that and we expect to continue to get growth based upon that fact… We believe there's an opportunity to be the first or second dominant version of Android on the planet.

McMaster has a point. Samsung may dominate in total market share, but the South Korean company hasn't been able to get Tizen off the ground in the smartphone market. By comparison, Cyanogen's modified version of Android is so popular it helped turn the OnePlus One into an unexpected hit earlier this year.