“An ambitious effort by Samsung Electronics Co. to roll out smartphones powered by a new operating system is on shaky ground,” Jonathan Cheng reports for The Wall Street Journal. “The world’s largest smartphone maker is investing a large amount of resources on an operating system called Tizen to challenge the mobile software duopoly of Apple Inc. and Google Inc.”
“But some of the world’s major wireless carriers are beginning to pull their support of phones slated to run the platform,” Cheng reports. “Tizen (pronounced TAI-zen) also has had trouble attracting large developers of applications that are increasingly at the center of the user experience.”
“Samsung’s longer-term aim is for Tizen—named to evoke a Zen-like “tying together” of different devices and functions—to serve as a unified operating system that can coordinate functions on every device a consumer owns, including a smartphone, refrigerator, television set and washing machine, all of which the company makes,” Cheng reports. “Prototype Tizen devices, one of which has been reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, look and feel similar to those running Android, with which it shares a common programming code base. But those involved in the project say the prototypes can’t be judged as final products, and Tizen’s central appeal is that it allows for more customization of the interface by carriers and manufacturers than are possible with Android.”
Cheng reports, “Yet industry executives and analysts say it has been difficult to get Tizen off the ground.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Scott M.” for the heads up.]
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