By Kim Tae-gyu
Samsung Electronics is producing more smartphones powered by its own Tizen operating system (OS) in a move to reduce its reliance on Android creator Google.
Samsung unveiled its third budget phone Z2 Tuesday in India after introducing the Z1 and Z3 last year. All three are based on the Tizen OS unlike the Android-backed Galaxy line.
Speculation is growing that Samsung would adopt Tizen in premium phones by releasing the Z9 in the not-so-distant future so the OS can take center stage.
Samsung has not confirmed this.
However, market analysts and industry officials say that Samsung will eventually use Tizen for its top-tier phones.
“If Samsung markets the Z9, it means the company will install Tizen not only in entry-level devices but also in high-end ones comparable to its Galaxy models and Apple’s iPhones,” a Seoul-based analyst said. “Google might regard it as a challenge to the supremacy of Android.”
In the global market for smartphone OSes, the duopoly of Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android has been in place for years, trailed by distant competitors like Microsoft’s Windows, Nokia’s Symbian and MeeGo.
They have their own merits and demerits, but Android is the foremost player by any metric thanks in no small part to the popularity of Samsung’s Galaxy products.
Currently, Android accounts for about three-quarters of the global market while the market share of iOS is around 20 percent and the remaining OSes occupy very small shares.
“Who decides what applications will be pre-installed on Galaxy handsets? The textbook answer would be that Google and Samsung would work together. But common sense tells us that Google almost single-handedly decides it and Samsung serves as a set-off,” the analyst said.
“In addition, it’s not Samsung but Google that makes money through numerous developers of mobile applications. You can guess why Samsung desperately wants to make Tizen a mainstream software.”
He added that the dependence on Google’s software also affects the development schedule of new Galaxy phones because they need to follow the schedule of Google’s Android upgrades.
Tizen is an open-source OS built by a community of developers. Samsung has played a pivotal role in the OS, which comes in multiple profiles to serve different industry requirements.
Earlier this decade, Samsung worked on its own OS called Bada targeted for mid-range and top-end smartphones and tablet computers. But Bada-powered devices, branded under the Wave name, failed to make a dent in the international market.
This prompted the tech giant to stop supporting Bada in early 2013 as Nokia did with Symbia and later MeeGo. The company then moved to Tizen for its Z-series gadgets.
Google spokespeople were not available for comments.