Samsung today entered into the mobile open operating systems with bada. The software will compete directly against rivals like Android or LiMo. Bada, whose name is based on the Korean for “ocean,” is designed to be open. It will be based on universal standards and won’t consider even core aspects of the OS off-limits: developers can not only use contacts, the dialer and other utilities but extend them with new features of their own.
Bada will have a central app store, similar to Apple’s App Store and the Android Market. Carriers will also have the option of customizing the OS to suit their own tastes. Bada is an extension of Samsung’s long-time, proprietary feature-phone OS, according to company spokesman Kim Titus. That’s the OS already running on popular phones such as the Samsung Rogue and Highlight.
What is Samsung thinking here, ask some observers, when they already support an open OS with Android. Maybe Samsung plans to put it in cameras and video players. Samsung says bada will provide smartphone features to mass market handsets.
The first device using bada will be available in the first half of 2010 along with the initial app store. More phones should be ready by the second half of the year. A more formal unveiling is due in the UK for December and will be followed by first looks for developers both in December and in January.
Samsung is moving to its own platform as it reduces its relationship with Symbian and Windows Mobile. Today Microsoft’s OS makes up almost 80 percent of Samsung phones. Samsung will increase its use of Android to about 30 percent next year and keep the percentage relatively constant through the same period. Meanwhile, Samsung phones using Symbian are expected to shrink to just a few percent in 2010 and should disappear altogether in 2011.
Meanwhile, analysts estimates Verizon “probably sold 100,000″ Motorola Android phones, selling roughly half their stock. Not bad…but not great.
