It was just this past January when Samsung’s Senior VP of Content Planning Tae-jin Kang reiterated Samsungs pledge from last year to merge their Bada OS platform into their new Tizen OS source. I guess it needed to be restated because after announcing the merger over a year ago, Samsung had been stone silent on any further progress made to join their two OS platforms into one.
Now, that’s all changed. Samsung’s Media Solutions Center President told Korean news agency Yonhap that a merger of the two won’t happen. Instead, Tizen will absorb the best features of Bada, saying “Rather than seeing this as a straightforward merger, it’s better to view it as a transition to a better service”.
The Bada parts that are going to be absorbed by Tizen? Well, anything that has to do with allowing Tizen to natively run Bada apps, that’s for certain. Not that there are a ton of Bada apps or anything, but there aren’t that many Tizen apps either. If running Bada apps natively inside of Tizen helps to pump up the app store count, Well, I guess that matters to Samsung.
I’ve previously made the point that Samsung appears to be looking to have greater control over their own platform by switching their focus more toward Tizen and away from Android. This move to knife Bada in the back really doesn’t change that at all, but it does provide a bit of clarity for Samsung going forward.
I’m not really sure why Samsung has drug this decision to kill Bada out for so long. It hasn’t derailed Tizen, as Samsung is the only one supporting it, but it did cloud the water so to speak. This whole thing would have been a lot easier if Samsung had just said last year that Bada was the past and Tizen was the future.