Samsung Hedges Handset Bets With Bada

Samsung’s been redoubling its mobile operating system (OS) platform activities in the last few days, with the availability of the Samsung Wave – its first handset built on bada, the OS it launched earlier this year.

Alongside the Samsung Wave, which was first unveiled earlier this year at Mobile World Congress, the handset maker also introduced the Samsung Galaxy S as its first smartphone on Google’s Android platform.

But depending on the success of its first handset launch, Justin Hong, Bada platform chief has reportedly suggested the OS could be ported onto tablet PCs and set-top-boxes for TVs.

The Korean manufacturer has been on a publicity tour to promote the software development kit for the bada platform, recently hosting a UK developer day designed to encourage interest in building ‘Samsung Apps’ for its application store.

Hong told ITProPortal Wave users would currently only be able to access 150 apps. Compared with Apple’s 225,000, the Samsung app store still has some way to go.

Entering an already crowded app store market has not dampened Samsung’s ambition though. Its stated goal is “smartphones for everyone,” which it hopes will double its market share by the end of the year.

The official company line is that “bada’s main goal is not to compete with other existing smartphone platforms”. Instead, the company intends bada to turn Samsung’s conventional customers into smartphone users by providing more cost-effective smartphones.

The company did already have two smartphones on the market running the Windows platform. But there are plans for eight more models in the works, half of which it has said will be based on its own platform.

Will late entry be enough?

But Rob Bamforth, principal communication, collaboration and convergence analyst at IT researcher, Quocirca had reservations about Samsung’s chances of reshaping the smartphone market.

“It might be cheaper for them to have their own OS in terms of intellectual property,” he said. “But there are plenty of good feature handsets that offer a cheaper alternative to smartphones. And, with Apple, Android, Symbian and even Windows Mobile, the key questions developers and ISVs [independent software vendors] will be asking is what’s in it for me?”

He told eWEEK Europe that fancy features would only go some way to making up for the fact that Samsung is a late entry to the market: “Even RIM, which is developing a similar stance, is not finding it particularly easy to build its own developer community.”

“The problem is,” Bamforth added, “how far should [app] developers go? They will develop on the leading platform, then maybe port it to the second most popular. But the returns on investment diminish from there.”