The day before Mobile World Congress officially kicks off, Samsung unveiled the Wave, the first phone running its new operating system called bada.
The multimedia event was held off site in a large room, where the walls served as giant video screens. Crashing waves and and over-sized images of jellyfish made it feel like an aquarium. On stage, dancers kept rhythm to loud techno music and a trapeze artist hung from the ceiling. But more important than all of that was the message that Samsung was there to deliver. For months, the South Korean handset maker has provided an often muddled and confusing explanation for what bada is, but tonight President of Samsung’s mobile communications division JK Shin explained how it fits into the company’s view of the future.
The message was essentially this: all phones should be smart. Most of Samsung’s handsets today are considered feature phones, which run on the company’s proprietary OS. The bada smartphone OS will change that. And while, it will face competition from Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Symbian, Samsung has the distribution power to make a project like this a reality. Not to mention, it will give developers and content companies access to a much larger and global market. Shin: “We are committed to bringing the smartphone era to everyone, and making it a true democracy for billions of people on all continents in all corners of the world. This is Samsung’s vision to advance the democratization of the smartphone era, regardless of cost, or lifestyle or geographic location.”
The event was considerably light on details. The first phone, being called The Wave, was unveiled and was on display to play around with, however, Samsung didn’t address many of the basics, such as cost—which will be the primary factor in developing countries, where users pay the full price of the device and often do not have a lot of spending power. As for the legitimacy of Samsung’s argument that one day all phones will be smartphones—it’s not too far off. After all, even many feature phones today have access to the internet, email and applications. How’s that so different from a smartphone? The technical definitions are definitely blurring.
Instead, Samsung focused on the hardware and software:
—Hardware: While most feature-phones have low-end hardware, the bada vision is completely different. The Wave is thin and light and thas a “Super Amoled” screen, meaning that it is very bright and responsive to the touch. It has a super speedy 1 Ghz processor that Samsung built itself.
—Software: The Wave is a bit of a hybrid between the iPhone, Android and a feature phone. It comes with Samsung’s own Touchwiz user interface. A clock widget mergers information with an analog clock, like the weather forecast for the next 12 hours, or stock quotes or your calendar items. In the contacts app, you can see a lot of information about your friends in one place, such as all the emails, text messages and IMs they’ve sent to you, but also your pictures and their latest social networking updates. A pull down bar, lets you access things like the music player, or Bluetooth connectivity.
—App Store: The third prong of this strategy includes developing an application store, where developers can sell their products and services to end-users. Given that the bada OS was developed entirely by Samsung, applications running on other platforms, like the iPhone, Android, or Brew, won’t be compatible. The app store launched in three countries—Italy, France and the UK last year—and will be in 50 by the end of the year.
The phone is expected to be available globally in April. Shin addressed just how committed Samsung is to bada: “Those of you who know Samsung, you know that when we dedicate ourselves to a new opportunity, we are serious and like to win. It [bada] is a key driver of our smartphone strategy. Samsung is advanced, but at the same time very accessible…Our revenue streams don’t compete with operators. We are proactively supporting operators with products and value-added solutions, which drive revenues for everyone.”
Samsung said that this is only beginning, or the first episode of the novel. Samsung will unveil the second episode, possibly as soon as CTIA in March.
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