back to article Samsung confirms Tizen-based mobes to debut this year

Samsung says it is pressing ahead with plans to release mobile phones running the Linux-based Tizen OS, with more than one model due to arrive in 2013. "We plan to release new, competitive Tizen devices within this year and will keep expanding the lineup depending on market conditions," the company told Bloomberg News in an …

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  1. LarsG
    Meh

    This may lead to a three way patent squabble rather than the two way one we see today.

    I look forward to the controversy it will raise!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Nobody except Google and some shortsighted fanboys are happy with the way Android is going. Cheap handsets from Google and the latest OS, Motorola Mobility and so on.

      1. ratfox
        Angel

        Nobody?

        I would think that users are reasonably happy about having an alternative to iOS and cheap handsets… But of course users tend to get forgotten.

        1. Stuart Castle Silver badge

          Re: Nobody?

          Users always have had an alternative to iOS. Whether it was any of the proprietary OSes, various flavours of Symbian (both Nokia and others) or Windows Mobile..

          Ironically, Android (the OS you say users are reasonably happy having as an alternative to iOS) is at least part of the reason behind the deaths of these operating systems. iOS being another part.

          Also, one thing I might be slightly concerned about if I was an Android fan.. The fact that the largest single supporter of Android (Samsung) seems perfectly happy to jump from OS to OS, even dropping OSes with little or no notice. I'd be wondering how long it is before they drop Android. Especially as their advertising seems geared to telling people that Samsung (and not Android) is the best alternative to Apple.

          1. asdf

            Re: Nobody?

            >Also, one thing I might be slightly concerned about if I was an Android fan.. The fact that the largest single supporter of Android (Samsung) seems perfectly happy to jump from OS to OS, even dropping OSes with little or no notice.

            Might be worrying if you couldn't order the latest greatest Android flagship phone from Google. Granted it sounds like they are moving away from being able to make handsets themselves with Motorola Mobility but with the billions they have they can find someone to make them a handset.

            1. Ian Johnston Silver badge
              Thumb Down

              Re: Nobody?

              But you can't order the latest greatest Android flagship phone from Google. They made a pitifully small number of them and those that did came to the UK sold out in two batches over about 30 minutes each, with no sign that any more will ever arrive here.

          2. DaLo

            Re: Nobody?

            It makes sense for Samsung to explore alternatives - It's no use them becoming dependent on a single supplier to make sure they stay in business. Therefore it's best to have plenty of backup options available.

            However they are unlikely to 'jump ship'. Android is a major reason why Samsung are the largest phone manufacturer in the world and their profits are heavily filled by their Android offering. As well as brand credibility where they are in the top echelons of phone manufacturers (if not the top) .

            So they will carry on with their Android offerings for as long as people keep buying them, Google keeps developing it and they are making money out of them. However if any of these things stop then they need to be able to have a credible (and mature) OS to move towards. It might take another 10 attempts after this to get there and it might be 2050 befor eit is needed but it's no use being another Kodak or Polaroid or Microsoft who rest on their foundations and watch the world pass them by.

          3. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            @Stuart Castle Re: Nobody?

            Downvoted for lack of point.

          4. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Nobody?

            Meh, even without Samsung, Android is here to stay. Sony have some supurb handsets, LG have shown us they are capable too, HTC once they have met their contractual obligations to piss away development resources on Windows Phone will be back with their eye on the Android ball too.

            Once Nokia shareholder have booted out their Elop shill, they too will be likely onboard (how else can they ever get back to where they were...)

            This whole article is basically flaimbait.

            1. A n o n y m o u s

              Re: Nobody?

              Android is here to stay just maybe not on Samsung. Apple have iOS and it's unique to them - Samsung are just like any other manufacturer. Long term I can see Motorola being dominant with Android as Google are going to want to push that brand unless they are happy to just own the patents.

          5. This post has been deleted by its author

            1. Mark .

              Re: @ Stuart Castle

              With Android at 75%, it's not a race anymore - it's one leader by far, with a few other much smaller platforms.

        2. A n o n y m o u s

          Re: Nobody?

          iOS based phones are only about 15% of all phones shipped - so I'd say that is having an alternative?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        Carry on dreaming.

        The only people upset about the way Android is going, are Apple and especially Microsoft (who's Windows Phone platform is still-born and hemorrhaging marketshare year on year, down from it's embarrassing 1%) ....

        1. Mark .

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#Historical_sales_figures - whilst MS's sales fell from 2008-2011, they were up in 2012. Still nothing amazing, but no one had a problem with iphone having similar sales in 2007-2008.

  2. Chris 171

    Maemo, MeeGo

    Well there's a turn up, I wonder if the devices will have expandable memory and normal SIM cards?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Maemo, MeeGo

      Who knows, but why name the "new" OS after a soft drink. Given the heritage, I'd have thought that the naming ought to go from Maemo, Mobiln, Meego, all ancestors to......Manko

      Oh, WP8 got there first, you say.

  3. Thomas 4

    This is vaguely irritating

    Whenever someone talks about this OS, I feel a nagging urge to drink some fizzy red liquid with a billion additives and artificial colours in. =/

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: This is vaguely irritating

      Has the opposite effect on me. I get a dreadful flashback to the follies off my yoof, slurping some ghastly reddish abomination... and the strange sensation it would impart to my teeth... and the ensuing curious semi dazed - semi crazed aftermath... and I feel overwhelmed with a nagging urge never to go near anything fizzy again. Still... slightly less heinous than Fanta et al I suppose. :#

      ...but... yes... it's "vaguely irritating" for me too! ;o)

    2. Lamont Cranston
      Pint

      Re: This is vaguely irritating

      Don't do it - the current formulation of Tizer tastes nothing like the drink you remember (they've replaced all the E-numbers with "fruit extracts" or some other unsuitable crap).

  4. asdf
    Thumb Down

    Mee didn't go

    Its a smart way to gain leverage with Google but if Microsoft is having a hard time getting devs to write for its ecosystem what chance does Tizen have? Its not about the OS at all but about the apps available. Samsung being now the biggest phone maker is smart to branch out to cover its butt but I don't see Tizen ever being anything but another WebOS could've been DOA or simply vaporware.

    1. asdf

      Re: Mee didn't go

      And giving it the ability to run Android apps sounds like a recipe for disaster. In general your customers expect the vast vast majority of Android apps to run flawlessly on their handset and if this is not the case you are risking damaging your brand.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Mee didn't go

        >And giving it the ability to run Android apps sounds like a recipe for disaster.

        Why? That's exactly what I'm expecting them to do... and I imagine the vast Android app market is a huge part of the appeal. Why should there be any compatibility problems? Android != Windows! Isn't this the point of "FOSS"? Surely Samsung could even dump the entire driver & Java stack from Cyanogen into their phones - just for the Android apps - if they felt the need or if they unearthed any hidden Microsoftian "incompatibilities" or whatever?

        I'm starting to think a generation of Microsoft may have seriously damaged some brains :-(

        1. asdf
          Facepalm

          Re: Mee didn't go

          Good points considering the base could be basically the same. Still I see it always being a bit slower and bloatier than Android considering it will largely be Android with a bunch of extra crap bolted on.

          1. Greg J Preece

            Re: Mee didn't go

            Good points considering the base could be basically the same. Still I see it always being a bit slower and bloatier than Android considering it will largely be Android with a bunch of extra crap bolted on.

            You've got that entirely the wrong way round. Android is Linux with a Java virtual machine nailed on. MeeGo is just Linux, and with Tizen you'll have the option of firing up the JVM for running Android stuff when necessary. That's going to use fewer resources, not more.

    2. ian 22
      Facepalm

      Re: Mee didn't go

      Yet Another Mobe OS (YAMOS). Lovely thing about standards, there are so many to choose from.

      1. Greg J Preece

        Re: Mee didn't go

        Yet Another Mobe OS (YAMOS). Lovely thing about standards, there are so many to choose from.

        I think you're confusing "standards" and "products".

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I wonder where they are planning to use them?

    Is this just for low end products (maybe writing around whatever Android OEMs pay to Microsoft?) Or maybe only on the high end, to practice Apple-like control of the whole ecosystem? Or for everything?

    From what I've read, Tizen can run Android apps, which is good, but of course this reduces the incentive for developers to ever code apps to Tizen's API (the OS/2 problem)

    1. GrantB
      Boffin

      Re: I wonder where they are planning to use them?

      I would guess they are looking at using it for featurephones where it would replace Bada and whatever OS my old Sammy dumb phone used. Probably talking about phones under US$100

      Makes a lot of sense: development is relatively cheap, runs on a range of cheap chip sets, and I bet they will work hard to avoid any royalties or patent payments to Microsoft or Google. Saving just a few dollars per handset will be enough to trim the price for people who really want a basic phone and not a smartphone. Don't need 100,000 apps either - just the ability to throw some basic games and Facebook/twitter clients on the handset. Tizen will do that.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I wonder where they are planning to use them?

        Suspect Samsung do not like Android especially - Google buying Motorola is a continual threat / risk to them as are any other manufacturer as literally anyone could come up with the new 'best' Android phone - it just happens to be Samsung for now but why not Asus, HTC, Nokia, Lenovo, HP even - or Motorola of course (plus plenty more).

    2. brianwarner

      Re: I wonder where they are planning to use them?

      Just to clarify, the Android compatibility claims are actually not from Tizen. There's an independent company called OpenMobile that offers a product called ACL, or Android Compatibility Layer, that can be run on Tizen and provides the ability to run Android apps.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I wonder where they are planning to use them?

        All of them?

  6. Bob Vistakin
    Linux

    s/Bada/Tizen

    And in 2014 s/Tizen/Ubuntu etc, not bothering the serious mobile players a jot. It will, however. cause all these novelties to be lumped along with microsoft in the "others" section of every market share report for the next few years - the sub 5% aggregate generally considered floor noise.

  7. csumpi
    WTF?

    "about the only thing Tizen would seem to have going for it is its pedigree"

    "about the only thing Tizen would seem to have going for it is its pedigree"

    Seriously, WTF? How about the fact that it would actually be installed on phones from the largest phone manufacturer? Or that doesn't count as "going for it"?

  8. Richie 1

    Just like buses

    You wait years for an open source mobile stack and then five come along at once!

    All one of the five players has to do is get a non-sucky handset into actual shops and not drop support for the OS within days of release. Simple (I think).

  9. james 68

    not quite

    "The first hints that Samsung was looking to Tizen as a possible replacement for Android came in June 2012, when the mobile maker sunk $500,000 into the Linux Foundation, which oversees Tizen development."

    not so much, try googling LiMo - you know... what Tizen was called before it had a name change, or simply look at the Tizen Wikipedia page. hell just check your own archive http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/26/limo_founded/ from 2007 no less

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So Samsung are dedicated to Android then?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bada seems to be dead

    I bought a Samsung Wave Y just before Christmas as a cheap PAYG phone, £40 unlocked. At that price it's a bargain, nice wee phone, great battery life and the built in Mail/Facebook/Browser is fine and that's what I use it for mostly (apart from phone calls of course). But the App Store is like a ghost town and what is there is overpriced, buggy crap.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Bada seems to be dead

      Cheap and nasty I mean if that's all you wanted it to do fine but as you say don't hold your breath for any updates, apps etc.

  12. Greg J Preece

    I am liking the way this year is going! First Ubuntu is announced for phones, then Tizen's release gets confirmed. With Jolla and Firefox OS also possibly on the horizon, I might finally have an upgrade path from my N900!

    Sure, Tizen punts HTML5 as its primary ecosystem, but come on, it's MeeGo based. Pennies to pounds someone has a bash terminal out of it ten minutes after launch.

  13. mark l 2 Silver badge

    I don't see how Tizen is going to avoid patent disputes any more than Android does now, the only advantage i can see is them being able to create there own app store on Tizen so they can generate profit that way, but why go to that effort when they already have Bada which is top to bottom owned by Samsung

    1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

      Ah, but here's the benefit

      Unlike us (because of the NDA that is part of the settlement), Samsung know which patents Microsoft have hit them with over Android in the past. If they avoid those patents, they may be able to avoid having to pay the license fee, which may save them dollars per phone. They will also have some control in order to avoid the Apple ones as well.

      I suspect that the main one that MS roll out frequently are the FAT patents, some of which will expire shortly, but I believe we've never found out the full set.

      1. HAL4000
        Mushroom

        Re: Ah, but here's the benefit

        >I suspect that the main one that MS roll out frequently are the FAT patents, some of which will expire shortly, but I believe we've never found out the full set.

        I suspect you're absolutely right... but I doubt Samsung could give a crap about Microsoft Inc.'s smelly old FAT any more... Samsung has just landed F2FS in the kernel... I wonder what that could be useful for! ;o)

        Eat that M$!

  14. Bod

    Of little interest outside of Japan then

    "Samsung may be planning to launch its first Tizen device in partnership with Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo later this year"

    This is the key part. Japan has a quirky mobile market of its own, with different infrastructures and mobile devices quite unlike those in the rest of the world, many running a very Japanese specific and independent OS which they seem to prefer.

    So what it seems is going on here is Samsung are just brewing up another linux based mobile for Japan. I doubt it will get seen outside.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Here, have a clue

    Tizen appears to offer little that competing platforms don't. For example, its app development model is based on HTML5 and related web technologies – but whose isn't these days?

    Well, iOS and Android for starters. One uses Objective C, the other Java.

  16. Mark .

    "Samsung does have its own, proprietary smartphone platform in the form of Bada, but handsets running that OS have not proven popular, save for in a few select markets."

    I don't think I've ever seen a Bada smartphone for sale in UK markets? So it's as much I think that Samsung haven't chosen to market it everywhere, nor make it its flagship platform.

    Will Tizen get the same treatment, or will it get some more mainstream marketing support? (I'm obviously not expecting it to replace Android yet on their main S* or Note platforms, but at least something available in most countries?)

    "Still, none of those platforms was particularly successful"

    The N9 sold 1 million in approximately 76 days - I guess the iphone wasn't particularly successful either...

    "For example, its app development model is based on HTML5 and related web technologies – but whose isn't these days?"

    Er, most of them?

    I think it's interesting that whilst Tizen is seen as a competitor to Google's Android, the development model is very much in line with ChromeOS - i.e., using HTML5 for applications, even for offline ones.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      N9...

      As an N9 owner, it would be interesting to know how many were sold. I am very very happy with mine, despite not having such a massive app base from which to choose. I really like the interface, and it runs fine.

  17. Anonymous Coward 15

    It's pining! Beautiful plumage.

  18. h3

    With Tizen hopefully you can just build against qt or the enlightenment foundation libraries. Afaik it supports both. If it is readily available (in the way the N9 wasn't) I will likely go for it.

    I don't really care what you are supposed to be able to do.

  19. Jess

    I hope it is good.

    It sounds like the best chance of a suitable replacement for Symbian, given the reports I have heard of the N9. Though the new BBOS also sounds interesting.

    Wouldn't Samsung be able to offer the same phone with Tizen or Android (or Ubuntu even)?

    I wonder how many of the MS (and other) patents are essential and core functions?

    i.e. could they offer a free Android, with an enhancement pack sold via the store.?(Which would be included in the higher end phones, already)

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Has Android passed the tipping point? And for that matter can it?

    Clearly in the Desktop market there came a point that for the overwhelming number of manufacturers Windows became the only choice. Anything else was to launch marginalised product that would never succeed commercially (Apple being the exception that proved the rule).

    The question isn't so much would Samsung (or LG, HTC, etc.) like to leave Android - logic suggests they'd like to be masters of their own software stack and use it to differentiate. No the question for me is more COULD any of them leave. Sure they can mess around with alternates, just as HP tried to do but can they deliver the right user experience.

    Somethings seem to favour Android's continued growth - Level of Google Services integration strikes me as the immediate killer "app" for Android (look at iOS Maps for a great example of denying yourself Google back end services) but others favour the option to break away to something like Tiser, the obvious ones being the ability to fork/bastardise Android/use Linux to quickly build your own "Googleless" environment and an ability to overlay Android Apps on to Google Free devices.

    So, for Google the required strategy seems to be two fold (and I think it's essentially a one way bet):

    1. Make Services compelling enough for Licencees use Android as the easy option

    2. Where manufacturers don't use full fat Android, make linking/licencing to the Google Services Layer a very "commercial" (read costly) prospect for them.

    In the final analysis, to really leave Google behind, Samsung would need to build what Apple have at best only succeeded in doing - building relevant service layers that don't require Google integration and that sounds like a very tall order.

    Samsung might just have the will and market presence to make this leap, but I doubt anyone (cash rich Apple with their control ethos excepted) would have the stomach for it.

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