For some time now, Samsung has been rumoured to be working on Tizen powered devices that we are yet to see. It was even believed that Samsung would unveil its first Tizen powered Smartphone at MWC 2014 earlier this year. That of course did not happen and we only ended up with two Tizen powered smartwatches, the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo and the awesome looking Gear fit fitness band.
If you are still waiting for Smartphones running Tizen, there is some good news for you as Samsung is believed to be working on a Galaxy Smartphone powered by Tizen to be released next month (May 2014). This new Smartphone is rumoured to resemble the Galaxy S4 in many ways and will be headed to Russia before other markets.
According to an Indonesian Tizen blog, the Smartphone is mainly targeting emerging markets where Smartphone growth has room for expansion. If this is the case, we in Kenya may just be on Samsung’s radar when it finally unveils their Tizen powered Smartphones.
Previously, a senior Vice President of Samsung’s product strategy team highlighted that the company was planning to unveil two Tizen powered Smartphones this year (2014). One of these will be a high end Smartphone while the other will be a mid range Smartphone used to drive volume sales.
Tizen is a pretty new OS platform and having a big brand like Samsung onboard really helps its growth. We will have to see if other manufacturers join Samsung on this considering all the negative factors associated with smaller OS platforms. Most manufacturers are not happy with Samsung’s dominance of the Android platform and I believe will be hesitant to jump on a new platform that Samsung has invested so much in.
