In a every increasing world of smartphone manufactures and software developers, there is the best and then there is the rest. Nokia’s own Symbian OS (S60), along with RIM’s Blackberry OS and Apple’s iPhone OS hold the top three spots in market share for smartphone OS’s, with everyone thing else making up the rest. The main reason for Symbian’s success has been it’s licensing. More smartphones around the world are sold with symbian due to two things, Nokia making it, it’s number 1 smartphone OS and also other manufactuers also using it in a range of handsets, Samsung being one of these. Samsung, which holds the umber 2 spot for global mobile sales currently uses a mix of Windows Mobile and Symbian for it’s smartphones with about a 80/20 split. This is all about to change.
Samsung has just annoucned a smartphone platoform of it’s own, promising an open platform for developers. Unlike Android though, Samsung is developing Bada solely for its own devices, much like Apple, Rim and Palm. Its was looking as though Samsung where going to slowly ditch Windows Mobile in favour of Android and even made a commitment to increase its split of Android based smartphone handsets to over %50 with Symbian and Windows Mobile making up the rest, but it seems as though Symbian is going to be the loser here with an expected full phase out by 2011.
This to me does make sense but is a little strange. The Omnia HD or Icon HD was the latest mainstream handset to ship with Symbian 5th Edition, the same OS as the Nokia 5800 and flagship N97. The difference being that Samsung made a much better piece of hardware then Nokia. The software was snappy and with a capacitive touch screen rather than resistive gave the user a much better experience, main issues being was Nokia shipped software updates much much quicker and more frequent that Samsung. This may have had something to do with the fact that the software wasn’t built in house. Bada now allows them to do this, and make both hardware and software specially to there needs and handsets. To me this is a win, but with yet another software in the mix and yet another thing for people to learn, will they take the plunge?
I wouldn’t say that Samsung would have their first Bada handset out by the end of next year but when it’s reported that a complete phase out of Symbian by 2011 and Bada making up half its range by 2012, i could definitely be on the cards. Hit up the press release at the official Bada Website
Recent Comments