Samsung has reported that it will be merging its indigenous operating system ‘Bada’ (which means ‘ocean’ in Korean) with Tizen, a project operating system that it is developing in collaboration with Intel.
This announcement was made by Samsung’s Senior Vice President of Contents Planning, Tae-Jin Kang at the Consumer Electronics Show. He added that the work had already started though the timeline for the completion of the project was uncertain. The main advantage with this integration is that Tizen will be able to support applications written for Bada, and additionally, older Bada apps will be compatible with the new software. The Vice President also announced that after the merger, developers will be able to make applications for both platforms using the same software tools, which will ensure a homogenous design process and backward compatibility across versions.
This decision by Samsung is significant as there has been great speculation about how the world’s biggest manufacturer of smartphones and world’s second largest producer of cell phones will manage its many operating systems. Samsung currently employs Android for its high-end phones and tablets, Microsoft’s OS on several phones and two operating systems for TVs. Though Bada is Samsung’s home brewed OS, developer support has been lacking since its launch, clearly hampering the platform’s ability to grow quickly in emerging and developed markets.
Bada has gained considerable popularity since it was launched in September 2011, holding 2% share in the global smart phone market, greater than the share of Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS. The merger of Bada with Tizen, which is the new name of the Meego OS, will give Samsung access to thousands of developers which will definitely help the company create more applications and ensure greater options for consumers.
Bada and Tizen are similar in some ways, as both are Linux based. In the statement given by Kang, he confirmed that the core of the new operating system will be Linux as well. Bada is expected to cover lower-powered phones that run on single-core processors and may also be used on non-phone devices such as tablets. Tizen is more suited towards higher-end phones. While Samsung sees great potential in the merger of the two platforms, it has said that the transition period for both platforms to be fully integrated will take a while. It also stated that Tizen will find its way into at least one or two phones this year, though it will not become Samsung’s top platform anytime soon.
January 30, 2012 at 1:02 am
That’s pure awesomeness. Linux based is the way of the future. Meego was highly successful technically with Qt4 as its front end. Let’s hope that this Bada + Tizen merger ( Baizen ? ) also uses Qt4 too. Giddy up *