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Samsung Woos Developers As It Eyes Tizen Expansion Beyond Smartphones

Posted by timothy on from the me-tizen dept.

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.

12 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. Steve Jobs playbook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Own critical pieces of technology

  2. Android is where the money is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Android is where the money is by Jack+Griffin · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I bought into the Samsung hype, fancy TV, best of breed mobile devices, I even have a Samsung Microwave. But as an owner I find their service to be among the worst I've ever come across. When my phone stopped working, they said it was water damaged and not covered by warranty. After weeks of phone calls and letter writing I had to take them to court to get a replacement. Ironically at about the same time, my daughter's iPod stopped working in a similar manner. 2 minutes in the Apple store they replaced it on the spot despite it having a cracked screen. I still won't own any Apple devices due to their overly restrictive interface, but they know how to treat their customers

      Samsung recently pushed out an updated firmware for their LED TVs which breaks Plex, the most popular app for Samsung TVs. This issue is all over the Internet and Samsung's response is deafening silence. They won't roll back or even offer an alternate FW version, customers are left on their own and treated like shit.
      I'll never buy another Samsung product no matter how good the specs are. Backup service is equally important and these guys are the worst at it.

    2. Re:Android is where the money is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I have a laser printer and smart tv from Samsung. Neither of those have received a single firmware update, despite the numerous software bugs they have. In reality all the smart-tv features are completely useless due to bugs and/or general slowness. Since Samsung does not show any kind of care for their products after money has changed hands, I will not buy a single device from them again.

  3. Tizen? Don't make me laugh by StevenMaurer · · Score: 5, Informative

    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:

    Time went by and Bad Things started to appear. Git/gerrit was official in some teams, but Perforce was official in other teams (even working on the same component). Some patches went there, some there. The management finally decided Perforce code should be used as THE source for building OS images. Again, they only forgot to tell everyone else to stop using git

    Both repositories diverged to the point of being almost incompatible. Issues in Perforce code were given to git teams, which resulted in a litany of WTFs. After all, there’s not many things more fun than being tasked with fixing a bug in code that you physically don’t have. ASAP. Meetings took place, arrangements were made to rectify the situation. Months later, the situation is still the same.

    One implication was code review process. With gerrit in place, that was a non-issue. But the Korean teams didn’t (and still don’t) understand the notion of code review and pushed everything directly to the repo. The quality of some patches was so bad that enforcing code review became top priority for non-Korean teams. Finally, a solution was developed – MS Word based code review. Each changeset needs to be attached to a bug in the tracker. Each bug can have a Word document attached with a request for code review. That document is a three pages long form with information so useless, nobody even wants to read it. At the end there’s a place for copy-pasting a diff for each file changed, with the explanation why. Reviewers are supposed to fill a Word form with details about which line they comment on and what their issue with it is.

    Submitting a patch, clicking through the awful issue tracker and filling the form takes literal hours. All this because using git with gerrit was too tough. Fortunately, the review form has fields listing times taken by various steps in fixing a bug. Maybe someday someone will read how long pushing the code actually takes.

    No, they won’t.

    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...

    1. Re:Tizen? Don't make me laugh by StevenMaurer · · Score: 2

      To be clear, the "work" was a demo for the car company. But because the Tizen source didn't compile, that demo had to be more rigged than normal.

    2. Re:Tizen? Don't make me laugh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      While we're posting links to thedailywtf, let's not forget this one.

  4. Re:Problem with Samsung being Android's "Tentpole" by Stormwatch · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  5. Re:Problem with Samsung being Android's "Tentpole" by Kartu · · Score: 2

    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)

  6. How the fuck... by AmazingRuss · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...do projects even GET to this point? Who is running the place? Curious George?

  7. Re:Problem with Samsung ... by Kartu · · Score: 2

    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.

  8. Re: Smartphones are for cows by MemeRot · · Score: 2

    "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 :)