According to a report from Korean publication Korea Times, Samsung is considering using Tizen operating software on all of its devices, reducing its dependency on Google Android platform. Korean Times has quoted an unnamed Samsung executive saying, "If you don't have your own ecosystem, then you will have no future. Tizen isn't just a platform developed for use with mobile devices.”
Indian market will be ‘litmus test’ to solidify the Tizen OS, added the report. "Samsung's Z-branded Tizen-powered phones are popular with Indian consumers. During the first quarter of this year, Samsung sold about 64 million phones there. This means that Tizen is proving its competitiveness," said the executive.
A Samsung executive reportedly said “more incentives and support will be provided to Tizen developers,” although he didn’t provide any details. If the plan gets finalised, this will be a huge blow to Google. Google would of course be losing it largest OEM. Samsung will also face difficulties in convincing the developers to focus on a third platform.
"The reason why Samsung is testing Tizen's stability and usability focusing on mobile phones and wearable devices is that we need to have a correction period as Samsung is in the process of developing Internet of Things (IoT) driven business systems running on Tizen," Korean Times quoted the executive.
There were news surfacing earlier that Samsung is planning to move away from Android Wear for future smartwatches. Now, this has purely pointed to Tizen OS, where Samsung is said to have spent resources building a larger ecosystem. Unlike Android Wear watches, the Tizen-powered Gear S2 will allow users to make payments on their smartwatch with Samsung Pay by the end of the year.
