Samsung will be integrating their Bada mobile operating system with Tizen, their joint OS project with Intel. Work has already commenced, and we could see devices running the OS later this year.
Samsung made a big deal of its Bada mobile operating system when it was launched back in 2009, using words such as “ground-breaking” and “iconic” when describing it. Since then it has achieved around 2% market share and several phones using it have been released, including the Wave 3, which also introduced the second version of Bada.
But Bada’s days as a standalone mobile OS are numbered, as Samsung has decided it’ll be merged with Intel’s Tizen, the phoenix that rose from the ashes of MeeGo following Nokia’s departure from the project. Samsung and Intel got together to announce Tizen in September last year.
The Tizen/bada mash-up joins Windows Phone, Android and several other mobile platforms supported by Samsung, although like MeeGo, Tizen can be used in other devices too.
According to a Samsung senior vice-president work has already started on the project, but they currently do not have a completion date. Thanks to both platforms being based on Linux, Tizen will be backwards compatible with Bada and the SDK will be almost identical, allowing existing developers to start working on Tizen apps straight away.
Judging by a Forbes article on the subject, nobody at Samsung seems to be sure exactly what Bada and Tizen will end up powering, with talk of both non-smartphone products and upper-range smartphones.
Samsung hope to have “at least one or two” Tizen phones out this year, but have no plans to make it their main mobile operating system.
No comments: