We should have smelled this way back when Intel announced that MeeGo would be transitioned as a HTML5 centric operating system, called Tizen. Tizen was led by a technical team comprising of folks from Intel and Samsung, and today it is announced that Samsung’s Bada OS project would merge with Tizen. Both Linux based, and Open Sourced, Bada and Tizen would mean yet another operating system in the already complicated mobile platforms arena. Recently HP announced that it is about to Open Source webOS one may wonder if either Tizen or webOS would get serious traction anytime soon? Samsung is a force to reckon with in the mobile space, and if they are backing Tizen, it sure counts.
The MeeGo journey has been long, Intel and Nokia merged their mobile OS initiatives a year later, Nokia moved on to Windows Phone 7, leaving MeeGo and Intel in the cold. Being left behind in the mobile race, Intel certainly isn’t backing off from its own OS and here we see the Tizen effort getting a shot in the arm with Samsung’s support. Samsung for the records is the largest manufacturer of Android phones, and it is being speculated since long that Samsung is looking at alternatives beyond Android. While Android has registered enormous growth, the amount of patent issues and Google’s buyout of Motorola would have been a cause of worry for Samsung.
At the same time, we wonder if Google made the choice of buying Motorola after it realised that Samsung would go with Intel? Samsung already had Bada which they defended as a non smartphone OS, as off today, it looks like an aim at the future of mobile computing with a HTML5 focus. We may not see any immediate implications of this move, but we sure know that the mobile market is being positioned to be disrupted once again, when is the question!
Annkur P Agarwal Is the co-founder of Pricebaba.com and a contributing editor at OnlyGizmos
