Multinational comglomerate Samsung plans to develop more of its mobile devices around Tizen, its in-house mobile operating system.
Quoting a source who asked not to be identified, Reuters Seoul said Samsung would be releasing Tizen-based mobile devices at varying prices and was planning to integrate Tizen into all of its devices, including smartwatches and smart television sets.
However, according to an analyst, to pursue a an environment built around the Tizen, Samsung needs to ship out more smartphones with the operating system to create a following and attract more developers to work with Tizen.
Tizen was shipped out along with Samsung Z1, which was announced for release last January. Although it rated poorly on Samsung's website at only 3.2 out of five stars, the smartphone sold well enough in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. It ranked as the bestselling smartphone in Bangladesh from January to March while in India, more than a million Samsung Z1 phones were sold.
"What remains to be seen is how big a commitment Samsung wants to make to Tizen going forward," Ron Amadeo said in his review on Arstechnica of the Z1. "If Samsung wants Tizen to be a success on smartphones, it's going to take nothing short of a massive company-wide effort to do it. Google and Apple are two of the world's biggest software companies, and they're both 'all-in' on their respective smartphone operating systems. Samsung, a hardware company, can't possibly expect to keep up if it's only going to put in a half-hearted effort."
According to an article from Sammobile, Samsung will skip the Z2 and proceed directly to the Z3, which is due for release later this year. Sammobile is quite positive about Samsung equipping the quad-core Z3 with the company's own homegrown OS. The validity of the report is still under question since Samsung has yet to release an official statement on the issue.
