Samsung bada to rival Android, Linux

Samsung today entered into the mobile OS arena with bada. The software, whose name is based on the Korean for "ocean," is designed to be open and will compete directly against rivals like Android or LiMo. It will be based on universal standards and won't consider even core aspects of the OS off-limits: developers can not only use contacts, the dialer and other utilities but extend them with new features of their own.

Most details are left vague, but bada will have a central app store. Carriers will also have the option of customizing the OS to suit their own tastes.

Samsung expects the very first device using bada to show in the first half of 2010 along with the initial app store. More phones should be ready by the second half of that year while the app store will expand to 30 different countries, including key countries in Europe. A more formal unveiling is due in the UK for December and will be followed by first looks for developers both in December and in January.

The news backs analyst claims of Samsung moving to its own platform and adopting modern open platforms, including bada. If fully representative, it also signals the likely ends of Symbian and Windows Mobile at Samsung, as the forecast would have Symbian gone entirely by 2011 and Microsoft's OS at just 20 percent by 2012 where it makes up 80 percent of Samsung phones today. Such a gesture will also render closed platforms like OS X iPhone and Windows Mobile the relative minority in numbers, though not necessarily market share.

By Electronista Staff