Slashdot Mirror
Could Tizen Be the Next Android?
MollsEisley writes: Right now, Tizen is still somewhat half-baked, which is why you shouldn't expect to see a high-end Tizen smartphone hit your local carrier for a while yet, but Samsung's priorities could change rapidly. If Tizen development speeds up a bit, the OS could become a stand-in for Android on entry-level and mid-range Samsung phones and eventually take over Samsung's entire smartphone (and tablet) lineup.
Samsungs extensions on Android are bad enough - if they had an entire OS they controlled? Stuff that!
No, it can not. Android is already entrenched, and in a market where not even microsoft can dislodge it despite reasonable efforts Samsung can definitely forget about doing so.
Let's be clear that Tizen is actually the child of Nokia's and Intel's Linux-based OS that was known as Meego, which owed much of its existence to Nokia's Maemo Linux platform and Intel's Moblin. That's a lot of history, and Samsung has added more and more. Half-baked? What a bizarre term.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
It will be just an other obscure mobile OS - But If Samsung actually start to manufacture Tizen devices over Android. They will loose the market just like NOKIA did a few years before.
(apart from Samsung's need for pressure points vs Google ?)
Tizen needs a unique selling point. Being "a Mobile OS that works" isn't one, that need has been met years ago, and nobody wants Yet Another Smartphone OS for the sake of it.Maybe there's a need at the extreme low-end, next to Microsoft's Asha line (not a resounding success), and a tad below Android One. Maybe Security could be a selling point (except it doesn't seem to be doing much for Blackberry). Maybe there's a fringe of teach-heads who deem Tizen more linux-y than Android and keep agitating about it for that reason (not a big market).
As it stands, the most unfulfilled need I see is the carriers' desire to take back control of our phones, and I'd rather that one stay unfulfilled.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
If they want to have a chance, they must not have just bundled with a few new phones. It should have good enough ports for other samsung devices (even done officially by samsung) and open enough devices from other major manufacturers. They need to build a critical mass of actual users and a community behind it. And need to be very open. If they want (or must do, if done by another company) may keep some key part (i.e. optional android compatibility app/libraries) as what they sell or license of it and is not fully open source, but the rest should be.
Meego/Maemo failed mostly because it was available mostly on one particular device from one particular manufacturer. They could learn the lesson this time.
Like they assume that if there isn't a Facebook app they can't use Facebook.
AFAIK, without a Facebook app one will not receive Facebook notifications every time it's algorithms say it should, and this matters for many people.
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
MeeGo actually had a chance... if only the M$ trojan hadn't entered Nokia!
Circumcision is child abuse.
It's hard to be optimistic about the fate of a competitor starting from behind(and with Samsung, not exactly a bastion of taste, UI/UX expertise, or other software virtues, as the most visible player) and up against Android(which arguably has some seriously fucked design problems, but is actively being worked on and has Google's vast cloud-dominion behind it), iOS(which has zero users who aren't Apple; but usually manages to show the virtues of having a competent dictator), and WP(currently pretty tepid marketshare; but is a testament to the fact that MS can actually bring some talent to bear on a problem if somebody beats the hubris out of them enough times in a row).
That said, despite my low hopes, it sure would be nice to see it do better. Despite years of development, Android still bears some serious scars of either things that seemed like a good idea at the time(presumably back when supporting extremely resource constrained devices was still a consideration, in the period not long after it was developed as a successor to the OS used in 'sidekick' devices) or which simply didn't pan out(the not-actually-a-JVM-really-we-swear turned out not to be fast enough, so they added native extensions, and ARM turned out to more or less steamroller the competition in the smartphone space at about the same time, so nobody actually cared whether cross-platform worked or not, except Intel, who simply wrote up another shim to handle ARM native components). They say...nice...things about how well the audio system performs, as well.
It ships on a wide variety of devices that you can actually buy, today; but Android is pretty hard to get enthusiastic about as a pile of stuff dumped on top of Linux. A slightly less dysfunctional pile of stuff wouldn't be revolutionary; but it would be nice.
The only reason it exists at all is because Samsung sees Google taking 30% off of app sales and services and it wants that 30% for itself. That might be a wonderful motivating factor for Samsung to push this thing. For everyone else... not so much. Consumers will just see a new platform which has doesn't have the apps they want to use. App developers will just see yet another lame duck platform that they must spend inordinate effort to support or ignore completely.
Unless Samsung money hats devs and hand out free phones like candy, they're not going to get the buy-in to their platform. And even if they do it's no guarantee - Nokia and Blackberry both went down that route trying to buy devs and it didn't pay off.
Tizen runs Android apps by ACL; as I heard.
It seems like Google is has no long term commitment to building phone hardware. They didn't keep Motorola, for example. And this attempt to make a modular phone seems more like a technology demonstration then a product role out. Does anyone think they will try and make a business line out of it? I doubt it. So hardware vendors can continue use Android and not be worried about competing with Google directly, which is why I think they got rid of Motorola.
Why is Snark Required?
Android has matured and leads in apps. And it's freely available for a wide range of devices already. I don't see anybody coming close to the package Google can offer, tie-in services included. Apple sells hardware - their services are a loss. MS sells business software, subscriptions to MS Office, Consoles and now tablets. AFAICT they are behind in comodity computing now.
Google makes money selling *you*. They can give away all their stuff for free, including their services. As soon as one vendor has to pay extra to adapt Tizen, there will be a strong incentive to look into Android again. Or Chrome OS as the case may be. All Google needs to do is perhaps offer a few cheap-and-easy co-branding options for their OS.
Google wants to bring the second half of humanity online, along with any hardware vendor that cares to emphasise the bottom line.
I think they have a very good chance of succeeding.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Betteridge's Law of Headlines again.
appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars
Yep! And if you title your comment Betteridge's Law of Headlines you can get marked +5 insightful while contributing the same amount (nothing) to the conversation. Karma whoring is a beautiful thing.
Yes it is.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
If Samsung abandons Android for Tizen, it'll simply be surrendering the Android market to everyone else - Motorola, Sony, HTC, et al.