Samsung delays launch of Tizen smartphone due to lack of programs

Samsung Electronics has once again decided to delay commercial launch of its Galaxy Z smartphone based on the Tizen operating system. The new postponement was conditioned by the lack of programs for the smartphone.

“To further enhance the Tizen ecosystem, Samsung plans to postpone the launch of Samsung Z in Russia,” a statement by Samsung published by Cnet News reads. “Samsung will continue to actively work with Tizen Association members pursuing to further develop both Tizen OS and the Tizen ecosystem.”

The Samsung Galaxy Z smartphone was meant to be exclusively available in Russia and only then be released in other countries. The delay of the launch in Russia should probably mean that the unveiling of the handset in other regions will also be postponed.

Samsung pins a lot of hopes on the Tizen operating system, which it co-develops with Intel and a number of other partners. So far Samsung and its partners have developed several flavours of Tizen aimed at mobile devices, wearable computing devices and in-vehicle entertainment. Going forward the developers plan to add Tizen profiles for TVs, cameras and even smart home appliances.

But while HTML5-based Tizen platform can support various devices, software makers are not too interested in developing programs for Tizen, which is not available commercially. The problem for Samsung is that it cannot release a smartphone without software ecosystem and the latter will not emerge unless there are phones owned by end-users.

The Samsung Z smartphone is based on a quad-core Intel Atom system-on-chip and comes with a 4.8” Super AMOLED display with 1280*720 resolution. The handset features 2GB of RAM, 16GB of NAND flash storage, 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 BLE, USB 2.0, NFC, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a compass, a barometer, an ambient light sensor, a fingerprint scanner, a heart-rate sensor, a 2600mAh battery and so on.

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KitGuru Says: Keeping in mind that the Tizen smartphone software ecosystem will hardly become competitive to Apple iOS or Google Android any time soon, it is unclear whether it makes sense for Samsung to invest in it. Perhaps, Samsung needs to focus on smart wearable devices, TVs, cameras and other products based on the Tizen OS and only then try to release Tizen-based smartphones?

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