It is no secret that Samsung is not a ‘happy’ company of late – they have received criticism from a wide variety of critics…and much of it deservedly so. They are still reeling from their new Galaxy S5’s reception and slower than usual sales figures and there are rumors of a few different variations of the Galaxy S5 being worked on to compensate. However, Samsung has more on its plate than simply smartphones – they have been trying to push out a new ‘homegrown’ operating system, called Tizen. It already powers their new line of smartwatches and bracelets – Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo and the Gear Fit, but trying to launch Tizen on a smartphone in another country has proven to be a daunting task.
Samsung has been touting their new Samsung Z smartphone running Tizen – it was to be released in Japan earlier this year until telecom giant, and a big supporter of Tizen, NNT DoCoMo, backed out of the release, but never gave us a solid release as to why…same thing happened with Orange in France delaying their launch. At a June meeting of developers in San Francisco, Samsung announced the Samsung Z would be released sometime in the third quarter in Russia, however, Samsung announced today, another postponement. Samsung gave little information as to why, but issued a statement that “the smartphone will appear on the Russian market later, when we can offer our users a fullest portfolio of applications…[to] further enhance [the] Tizen ecosystem.”
Samsung knows how important the application area is to the success of an operating system – one only has to look at Windows and BlackBerry to get a sense of just how important App Developers are to their success – and has even paid out cash and other incentives to encourage developers to work on Tizen applications. Given this, it seems that with all of the delays there there to be something more fundamental at work in Samsung’s decision to keep delaying Tizen. Perhaps it is direct pressure from Google or perhaps Tizen supporters are wondering just how many operating systems – Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry can be supported in the mobile environment.
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