Ashwin Rajagopalan
India might be the world’s fastest growing smartphone market in the world and yet two out of every three mobile phones sold in India is still a feature phone. Samsung believes that a new operating system could be the bridge between the feature phone and the smartphone. That was one of the key messages that emanated from the company’s first ever Tizen developer Summit to be hosted in India (in Bengaluru). The ‘light-weight’ platform looks set to be central in Samsung’s big push for the Internet of Things as it tries to find common ground with its Smart TVs, wearable’s, smartphones and other connected devices.
The Tizen update:
According to Jason Dongwon Kwak, MD of Samsung R&D (Bengaluru), the choice of Bengaluru is not entirely surprising given that 500 Tizen developers are based in the city. It’s been almost two years since Samsung merged its home-grown Bada OS with Tizen and the brand has almost become synonymous with this fledgling Operating System almost ever since. 2015 saw the debut of the Z1 -Samsung’s sub Rs 5,000 mobile device powered by Tizen. This device has now crossed the 1 million sales threshold – a glimpse that the Linux-based open-source Tizen platform could gain more traction with a larger number of Tizen Apps. Samsung believes that the simple user experience and better power consumption could be key factors to push people make the shift from feature to smartphone. However the Rs 5,000 price point no longer gives it a huge edge given the number of Android devices available under that price. Samsung’s mid-market and budget smartphones have been under pressure thanks to the emergence of lower-priced Chinese rivals.
Indian App developers in the mix:
Developers at the conference will receive reference phones (rumoured to be upcoming Z3 Samsung Tizen device), disappointingly we were unable to spot one of these devices on day one of the summit at the Tizen Experience zone. This summit in Bengaluru is part of Samsung’s game plan to get more Indian developers acquainted with Tizen. Samsung revealed that 27% of the Apps within the Tizen ecosystem have been developed by Indian developers. That’s quite a staggering stat given that only about 1% of Apps on other operating systems have been developed by Indian developers. Samsung also announced a Tizen developer’s conference in Shenzen, China in September where developers would actually showcase Apps. The App list is currently dominated by games – 27 of the top Tizen Apps fall under this category with entertainment and utilities also in the mix. Samsung announced that app developers would take home 100% of all revenues from their Apps for the first year while the world’s third largest advertising platform (after Google and Facebook) InMobi revealed plans to bring Tizen developers within its net.
The OS of everything? :
With 100 billion devices expected to be connected to the Internet by 2020 worldwide, Samsung rode on the recurring tech theme of the decade – The ‘Internet of Things’ by positioning Tizen as the OS ready to straddle different devices and forms. Clearly ‘connected’ devices are going beyond just smartphones and tablets with TVs and wearables now in the mix apart from other home appliances and gadgets that could also potentially come under the Tizen umbrella. Samsung launched 17 Smart TVs this year sporting the Tizen OS
Tizen – the next level:
We saw glimpses of the new 2.3.1 Update and the 2.4 Beta version. Among the cool things we spotted was better support for circular screens (Clearly aimed at wearables) with features like a rotating bezel and an interesting ‘context trigger’ feature that connects Apps, people and the ‘surrounding environment’ to create a more contextual and personal experience. This was first unveiled at the Shanghai edition of the Tizen developer’s summit last year.
Relatively newer ecosystems like Tizen and Jolla are determined to break the stranglehold Apple’s iOS and Google Android have over the smartphone space. Ramping up the App store is clearly the key towards this push – the Tizen App store reported an 84% growth in the number of Apps this year but its early days yet.
