Samsung said its proprietary smartphone platform that it has been prepping for the past year will be the basis for one-third of the smartphones that it ships in 2010.
The first phone based on bada is called the Wave, which is expected to launch in the next few weeks in Britain and Germany, according to Lee Ho-soo, head of Samsung’s smartphone operating system, Reuters reports. With only about half the year left, Samsung must be expecting to accelerate development given its goal of shipping around 18 million smartphone units this year, which is only a small fraction of the overall it makes. The remaining two-thirds of the company’s smartphones will likely use the Symbian, Windows and Android operating systems.
Samsung’s bada will face a lot of competition in the space, especially when it comes to attracting application developers to the platform.
However, as the second-largest handset maker in the world, it may be able to achieve significant volumes quickly. It could simply swap out its old feature-phone proprietary platforms for the new Bada OS, and rely on its current market share to sell a lot of phones. In February, Samsung’s mobile communications division President JK Shin said it was there goal to enlarge the smartphone market to a bigger demographic of users: “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.”
Samsung said today that the bada application store won’t launch until June, and that eventually bada could run on more than just smartphones. Bada is “aimed at offering a unified platform for a wide range of products we offer such as TVs and computers,” Lee said.
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