Slashdot Mirror
Samsung Focusing On Phone Software
itwbennett writes "With the much-acclaimed Galaxy SIII in its pocket, don't think that Samsung is looking at Amazon's success with the Kindle and Apple's success with its iOS devices and saying to themselves, 'No, we'd rather not have that kind of diverse revenue, we'll stick to razor-thin hardware margins,' writes blogger Kevin Purdy. And that's not the only reason that Samsung might decide the time is right to maintain its own OS, or at least an Android fork: There's also the looming spectre of Google-Motorola."
Samsung already has their own OS, bada, and it's crap.
Forking Meego would be cool.
So Samsung has the rump of Meego in the form of Tizen... surely 3rd time lucky will give us the phone OS that will take mobile computing a huge step forward this time?
Mind you, they might just push Bada as well, and end up being the new Nokia.
So long as Samsung continues to be the sole producer of phones with SuperAMOLED+ screens, they've got my dollar secured. I'd much rather have those deep blacks than a Retina screen.
Of course if I was an Android user, I may be worried about Samsung creating their own fork which is almost guaranteed to be worse than vanilla. They may end up driving more users away with this than they'd gain.
- "Do you actually have anything of substance to write? This says 'slow news day by a lazy writer' all over the place to me."
- "It's click bait, something to get his numbers up and make it seem like he is being productive."
The article was interesting enough to make slashdot. (shrug)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Exec 1: Congratulations! Between you and Apple, you have utter dominance in the mobile market! You're also more profitable than every other Android manufacturer in the world!
Exec 2: We are? Quick, stop what we're doing! Change everything! It's the only way we'll continue this success!
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Now I can honestly say that I like Samsung's hardware a lot. I have a HDTV from them and I own a Nexus S. The build quality's always solid, the designs are nice and the phone screens are lavish.
However, Samsung's never seemed to me to be even remotely competent with software. TouchWiz has been described as anything from mediocre to disastrous, especially now that Android's default UI (with ICS) is fairly sleek. Unless they have plans to entirely scrap that and hire a better software team, I don't see how they can expect to actually fork Android. They'd either lose on all the Google-provided updates or have to have an extensive integration process every time a new version comes out. This might work with revisions, but large changes (like say, the jump from Gingerbread/Honeycomb to ICS) would require tremendous amounts of work for little benefit, in the end. Not following the lead set by Google would mean trailing in API implementation, having to maintain their own development kits and tools, and probably fracturing the environment with them sticking out like a sore thumb. Android app devs already have enough of a headache supporting three concurrent OS versions.
They're better off taking advantage of Google's platform. I doubt they'll change it much with the Motorola acquisition, which was in large part a land grab in the patent war. At worst, Samsung will lose their privileged Nexus maker status, which while important in terms of image doesn't translate into that many sales.
For some of us who have older S's (1.5 years) Samsung needs to support their phones like Apple does. Get us the updates.
If you need to look at how well Samsung can fail in their own software look at Kies. Poor platform support apart from Windows. Poor older phone support. Come on Samusung get with the big boys. Not everyone can upgrade every year. remind us why we should be loyal.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
OLD ------ NEW(???)
AT&T ------ Google
POSIX/C2 ------ SE Android
IBM AIX, SunOS, DEC Ultrix, et al ------ Samsung Galaxy, LG Optimus, HTC EVO, et al
BSD ------ BSDroid (no shit: http://bsdroid.org/