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Samsung Woos Developers As It Eyes Tizen Expansion Beyond Smartphones
New submitter Manish Singh writes: Why is Samsung, the South Korean technology conglomerate which has the tentpole position in Android, becoming increasinglu focused on its homegrown operating system Tizen? At its annual developer summit this week, the company announced new SDKs for smartwatches, smart TVs, and smartphones, and also shared its future roadmap.
They don't want to be dependant on Google for a large part of their revenue.
Own critical pieces of technology
Android has the lion's share of the market, followed by iOS. Windows Phone is dead, Blackberry is circling the drain, Sailfish is an an also ran. Tizen doesn't stand a chance. Samsung sell phones because of Android. Full stop. Tizen may sell some phones, but there is no real ecosystem. Google and iOS are the big players. Really, there is room for only two large players. Tizen is not going to make it, like Windows Phone.
Hey get back down in mom's basement with your flip phone, loser.
I worked on a contract in which an auto manufacturer was trying to use that abomination, and we could never even get the source to compile. Literally a year later, it came out that Samsung was trying to use both git/gerrit and Perforce as version control for it, mixed between different teams:
Luckily, that contract was short term. But because I put it on my resume, I got a few head-hunters inquiring about it. Quickly though, interest waned. Not hard to see why...
Is Tizen still a thing?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Android is already open source and Google services are free. Why would any user, developer or vendor want another operating system with tiny market share that doesn't offer any compelling technological breakthroughs? FirefoxOS provides device-agnostic thin client computing. Various custom android ROMs emphasize security or customization. But what does Tizen really offer than is not already available on a platform with bigger mindshare? So far, sounds like wishful thinking on part of Samsung rather than a solid business plan.
I have a Galaxy Note II, and I must agree. The hardware is solid (although the design is rather dull), but this thing would be nearly unusable if I couldn't install a different launcher. TouchWiz is a huge step backwards if you're used to "stock" Android.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Android is a Linux kernel with a UI shell, Tizen is also a Linux kernel with a UI shell. The difference is in the players and the licensing model. Tizen is backed by a consortium of the worst closed hardware/software platform offenders from Japan and Korea and its license and accompanying patent licenses are limited to those who pay to have compatibility certification. In other words, Tizen is an anti-user, planned obsolescence platform that should die. And it will.
Owner of S4 here, not sure what you are talking about.
Anyway, other than that, Kies (P|C Software) sucks and Samsung has terrible software record in my books. (starting with MP3 players, their SDK for TVs, ending with "Magic Info" crap)
One question: Can this model of operation continue indefinitely?
Yes. Yes, it can.
Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
...do projects even GET to this point? Who is running the place? Curious George?
It's hugely diversified product catalog probably has better longevity than western companies' "core business" strategy of putting all your eggs in one basket.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
However, they kept their past roadmap a guarded secret
The all-eggs-in-one-basket per company isn't so much a company strategy as an investor strategy. The investors in public companies prefer if the companies divest any non-performing asset, as they themselves don't end up with all the eggs in one basket, but are instead free to move in and out of companies and sectors without getting a lot of overhead in the deal.
Whether it's good for the companies themselves is of course another issue...
No.
If we look back into the shrouded mists of time, we see that Moblin begat Meego begat Tizen.
Moblin was Linux with a cool OpenGL interface from Intel on which Intel spent most of their effort ripping out the parts they didn't need.
Meego was the effort to put those parts back and make something useful on more than just intel hardware.
Tizen is the attempt to convince you that this zombie project has life lift in it. It doesn't. It's dead. Stick a fork in it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That "visionary" thing... give me a break please... Seriously...
There are millions of companies writing crappier software (for internal use or not) than Samsung.
It's just, that kind of quality contrasts with the rest of it. One expects more from a company that holds leading position on a number of fronts.
I think the biggest reason is not that they want to move from Android, it's that Samsung pays Microsoft about $4 for every Android phone they sell.With their profits dropping, if they can change to Tizen and keep the same look and feel of Android with TouchWiz they will save big money. There are many sources when a search is performed. Here's one: http://www.theverge.com/2015/2...
While android itself may be open source, the Google APIs are not.
There are some projects to replace them with open source alternatives, but Google keeps adding to/changing them and developers are addicted to the new and shiny.
See the issues people with the Kindle Fire are dealing with.
The other big reason for the change is control. Android might be open source, but it's still Google that decides what direction it goes. Samsung want that kind of control over Tizen, or at least take advantage things being de-facto standards.
For instance Android has it's own compositor sitting on bare metal, and it's own 2d graphics library to talk to that compositor. You won't find either of those outside of android.
Tizen uses a custom compositor with wayland or X11. Apps use whatever graphics library they like, and can just tell the OS to render it. That's standard practice for desktop developers today.
So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
Agreed, Tizen gives more control to Samsung compared to Android. But how is that going to make my life better as user or developer? Are Samsung APIs any better/faster/more secure than Google APIs? It would, I guess, make sense to have a framework on top of AOSP that lets users choose among many competing service providers just like they choose search engines. But Tizen is not it.
As a developer, having choice of graphics libraries would only benefit me if Tizen was a dominant platform already. Otherwise, I get to port my app to iOS and Android and then rewrite it using another graphics library. As an end user, I have to learn new gestures for each app and I shudder to think about accessibility.
When creating a product, the first question must be, what new value does it bring to the user and why nothing else in the market serves the same needs well. Making money down the line is obviously very important, but can not be the starting point or even expectation for a couple of years after launch.
Conglomerates were a huge American company strategy decades ago. The expected cross brand synergy almost never developed and investors soured on them, and most fell apart.
"Tizen is an open and flexible operating system built from the ground up to address the needs of all stakeholders of the mobile and connected device ecosystem, including device manufacturers, mobile operators, application developers and independent software vendors (ISVs). Tizen is developed by a community of developers, under open source governance, and is open to all members who wish to participate."
https://www.tizen.org/about
Hmm :)
There are 1 billion people in china who cannot access google at all.
I honestly didn't realize the situation there was so bad until we had a Chinese customer and they couldn't use our forgot password page because the captcha wouldn't even render.
And they have plenty of Android phones with alternative services. Why would they want another one with much fewer apps?
There is a difference between not being first and not being innovative....
Before the iPod, all MP3 players were either big and clunky, and used fragile laptop hard drives, had slow interfaces to computers (parallel ports, USB1) or were low capacity.
Before iTunes, most of the music stores had weird and complex music licensing rights - even Bill Gates was amazed at the lax licensing that Apple was able to negotiate.
Before the iPhone -- the smart phone market was made up of glorified pagers (BlackBerrys), shrunk windows PCs (Windows Mobile) and Symbian.
Before the iPhone most customers were at the mercy of the carriers who decided when you could update your phone and no manufacturer stood behind their phones for up to four years after you bought it ---my bad things still haven't changed for Android users.
Before the iPad you had over a decade of clunky MS tablet failures.
"increasinglu".... i hope you guys/gals get this buyout figured out. You really have something here & I hope it doesn't get lost in translation to a new company.
https://maltanetworkresources....
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This is gonna be a kind of "I agree" comment but here it goes: It also seems to me that there's little benefit for consumers or developers in Tizen. I have no idea how they're planning to advertise it, it'll be fun to see. ...) so I don't know why they don't push Tizen too. Maybe they see it as a lost cause.
Anyway, I read on sammobile.com that a phone with Tizen had had a decent amount of sales, in India I think, so maybe it has some legs. Clearly, developing Tizen is a move to escape from the huge power Google has on Samsung. Many people wouldn't buy Samsung smartphones if they didn't run Android and Google has been increasing its amount of control over Android lately.
Many other Android phone manufacturers also have a huge dependence on Google (Motorola, LG, HTC
I agree with this 100%. I worked on the original Yahoo WDK (bought from konfabulator) on the first series 7 LED TV prototype TVs from Samsung. They sent a series of Men In Black esque guys to our London office to review the difficulties we were having with performance on the prototype headsets we had, and basically said 4 words to us before fucking off back to wherever they came from as if they were god like.
I asked them to bump the hardware (we're talking a 200mhz SOC with 16MB RAM) and they declined and told us once we'd written the software "if it works we'll bump the hardware".
Bit hard to write an impressive UI with transitions etc when dealing with 16MB RAM and a worse-than pentium embedded SOC architecture, arrogant c**ts.
Oh and they wanted me to go and work for them for half of my usual day rate just outside west London, in a shit hole of an area for the record. Almost like I should be appreciative in some way? No thanks.
- Dan
Before the iPod, all MP3 players were either big and clunky, and used fragile laptop hard drives, had slow interfaces to computers (parallel ports, USB1) or were low capacity.
I guess that you have been sarcastic. iPods also used hard-drives and USB port.
No sig today.
Words Mean Things.
I said fragile laptop hard drives - 2.5 inch hard drives were much more fragile and more clunky than the 1.8 inch hard drives.
IPods never used USB*1* or parallel ports.
I stand corrected. But I think that you still overvalue Apple's creativity regarding iPods. From my point of view, the real thing was how Apple has changed digital music selling model. iPod, no matter that it was sold in millions, was not revolutionary in any way. It was just the same thing made slightly better. Even that is doubtful - my cousin had two iPods replaced; my friend got hers shipped with Windows virus (https://www.apple.com/support/windowsvirus/). If MS would do something like that it would be at cover page of NY Times, as it was Apple, it was not even a news.
No sig today.
You consider syncing 10x faster, smaller, better battery life, and more durable only "slightly better"?
As far as the windows virus barely making the news...search Google with the terms "iPod windows virus".
Samsung can try to woo developers all it wants, but anyone who has ever dealt with Samsung knows how truly horrendous Samsung support for their flagship products are. I mean, it's almost 2016, the latest Note 10.1 tablet is still a model that was released in 2013, and a recent version of Android for it is nowhere to be found. User forums are always abound with questions about whether Samsung has abandoned their product.
Samsung can make all the claims it wants, but until it actually demonstrates that it has a clue on how to support its devices, I wouldn't bother getting involved with them.
Oh, and their continual need to throw "prototype-level" features into Android products is really irritating. I know it's cute that clever Samsung developers can claim to design a feature whereby a user can scroll a web page by looking up and down the page with their eye movements, but until that's actually a useful feature, and until it actually works well, it should stay the hell away from production Android. And there's tons of other likewise "experimental" features that just have no place in a production-ready operating system.
Despite the excellence of their hardware, Samsung software is so bad it actually adds negative value to their products. Their unnecessary modifications to Android increase their support and engineering costs and decrease the performance, security, and reliability of their devices. And their corporate culture is so inimical to software engineering that they will never be able to produce a software stack that's worth anything. No doubt in my mind. Too many Samsung developers have the same stories to just write those situations off as isolated incidents.
So given that's the case, what's to be gained by moving to Tizen, an OS which Samsung isn't even willing to install on their flagship devices? Performance? Security? Battery Life? Ease of Programming? Business Opportunities? Developer Support? At least Samsung gets to avoid the Android patents fees, but how does it benefit customers and developers?