Samsung Releases Tizen SDKs For Gear 2 And Gear 2 Neo

Samsung has made the Tizen SDK for its wearable devices available from the Tizen developer website, allowing wearable technology enthusiasts to create applications for the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo smartwatches, announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month.

The Korean manufacturer hopes that the SDK will inspire the community to create a greater variety of applications for the new devices, to complement the existing apps already available, including Feedly, CNN and eBay.

Samsung, along with Intel, has been a major backer of Tizen but the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo are the very first devices it has released running the open source operating system. The company hopes that by ditching Android and using Tizen, it can breathe fresh life into its wearable efforts and establish itself as a leader in the fledgling market.

Tizen SDK

Samsung’s first smartwatch, the Galaxy Gear, received poor reviews and a number of other companies, most notably Apple, are rumoured to have competing devices in development.

Samsung had been expected to launch a smartphone running Tizen last year, but this deadline was not met, leading to questions about the platform’s future. Despite some concerns, the Linux Association assured TechWeek that the operating system was “alive and well” in an interview last year, and the Tizen Association secured another 14 members in February.

The company was expected to launch a smartphone called the Samsung ZEQ9000 at MWC this year, but again, such a device failed to materialise. Meanwhile the winners of the Tizen App Challenge, which was designed to encourage developers to create Tizen applications for a variety of devices, were announced in Barcelona, with Samsung and Intel among the companies to contribute to a $4 million prize fund.

The platform is just one of a number of open source operating systems hoping to offer an alternative to the likes of iOS, Android and Windows Phone, with Firefox OS, Sailfish OS and Ubuntu Mobile all in various stages of development.

Think wearable tech could be the new black? Try our quiz on for size!