tizen

Update: It looks like the merger of Tizen and Bada might not be a done deal yet. A Samsung official has told AllThingsD that while the company is considering the possibility, the decision hasn’t been made.

Samsung plans to merge its Bada mobile phone operating system with the open source Tizen project backed by Intel. Forbes reports that this means existing Bada apps will be able to run on Tizen handsets — and developers that know how to code for Bada will be able to use the same tools to develop for Tizen.

That might not sound like a big deal in the US, where not a single Bada smartphone is available. But Forbes says that Bada already has a larger share of the global smartphone market than Windows Phone 7… which is admittedly not much, at just around 2 percent.

Tizen is an open source Linux-based operating system that rose out of the ashes of MeeGo (which in turn was formed when the Moblin and Maemo products merged).

Tizen places a heavier emphasis on web technologies than MeeGo, but like it’s predecessor it isn’t just designed as a smartphone OS. Tizen could also run on tablets, netbooks, and other connected devices including in-car entertainment or information systems.

It’s not entirely clear if Samsung will kill its standalone Bada platform anytime soon. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Samsung keep the name and use it for future devices running a customized version of Tizen. Instead of getting an Android phone with Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface, for instance, you’d just get a Bada device… that can run Bada and Tizen apps.

By taking an active role in the development of Tizen, Samsung is hedging its bets in the operating system space. Tizen will give the company much more control over the features and customization of the OS for upcoming products — and in some ways Tizen could offer a better experience for developers and possibly users. Most Android apps run in a Dalvik virtual machine, while Tizen apps are native apps that don’t need Dalvik or any other software to run.

But there are already hundreds of thousands of Android apps available and customers are comfortable with the smartphone operating system (although Android tablet sales are still relatively minor). So while Samsung reportedly plans to offer a Tizen device or two this year, I doubt we’ll see the company abandoning Android anytime soon… unless Bada/Tizen devices prove wildly popular right away.

via The Verge

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10 replies on “Bada and Tizen sitting in a tree: Samsung, Intel to merge mobile OS projects”

  1. Android doesn’t run Java, the development platform is Dalvik: 
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_(software)

    There isn’t much of an impact from the abstraction and it has its advantages.  It is how apps can run on an ARM-based phone and an Intel-based Google TV, and MIPS is getting support as well.  And not having abstraction is why x86 Windows apps will not run on ARM-based Windows 8 tablets.

    1. Yeah, I probably should have said Java-like environment. Instead I’ve just updated the post to say Dalvik though, since I’m lazy. 🙂

  2. I’m really glad I’m not a Maemo developer. Or a Moblin developer. Or a Meego developer. Or a Limo developer. Or a Tizen developer. Or a Bada developer.

  3. The O/S is becoming less relevant as time moves on. The Power is in the dev/app space (as stated in an earlier post). Therefore If you have a large app store with many popular apps then users will spend. The sooner the disproportionate control the telcos have is pulled back the better. Its abouyt time the regulatory authorities pulled their heads out of their @rses and saw the pillaging of customer interest that was going on. Call charges are astronomic, restrictive practices such as tethering are still going on, what can and can’t be loaded on the phone (ip phone clients etc) are still going on. Legislative bodies are taking too long.

  4. would be nice to see apps become more platform agnostic but few companies want that to happen. . .gotta get you locked in!
    It would really spur the OS creators to ensure they have a great OS under the hood if you can jump OSes easily and still get all your apps–however, that would require developers getting together to allow users to purchase an app for any OS, even after they changed OSes. So, basically we need the developers to unionize 😉 so they can write once and run everywhere cause companies will NEVER do it. But take away all their apps and watch what happens.

    Seriously, I don’t think devs realize just how much power they have if they unite. The iphone would suck if it were not for the third party developers–you wanna know just how bad? Get a TouchPad or PlayBook LOL.

    As devices become more powerful developers become more important but their importance will only be seen if they unite and force all platform owners to adhere to standards so apps can easily be “written once and deployed everywhere.” Or they think theirs more money in writing for multiple platforms. . . meh.

    /rant 🙂

    1. Why would developers want that though? As it stands if they sell you an app in ios and you switch to android, you’re likely to buy their app again. Sure platform agnostic app development would help out up and coming developers so they could hit as many places as once but for the big names they would just be cutting into their bottom line.

      1. yep, that’s what I said–“they think there’s (brain fart typo in original) more money in writing for multiple platforms.”

        But then again, they do bitch and moan a lot about how hard it is to support multiple platforms.

  5. would be nice to see apps become more platform agnostic but few companies want that to happen. . .gotta get you locked in!

    It would really spur the OS creators to ensure they have a great OS under the hood if you can jump OSes easily and still get all your apps–however, that would require developers getting together to allow users to purchase an app for any OS, even after they changed OSes. So, basically we need the developers to unionize 😉 so they can write once and run everywhere cause companies will NEVER do it. But take away all their apps and watch what happens.

    Seriously, I don’t think devs realize just how much power they have if they unite. The iphone would suck if it were not for the third party developers–you wanna know just how bad? Get a TouchPad or PlayBook LOL.

    As devices become more powerful developers become more important but their importance will only be seen if they unite and force all platform owners to adhere to standards so apps can easily be “written once and deployed everywhere.” Or they think theirs more money in writing for multiple platforms. . . meh.

    /rant 🙂

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