Samsung are planning to launch their first smartphone based on their own ‘Bada’ operating system in the next few weeks.
Bada apparently means Ocean in Korean and Samsung are hoping that with Bada they will be able to rival the likes of Apple.
“You need a proprietary system to drive growth in the smartphone market and Bada will do the job, as it is designed to support all segments from low to high end,” Lee Ho-soo, head of Samsung’s smartphone operating system, told the Reuters Global Technology Summit on Wednesday.
Now we can’t forget that Apple has an amazing app store of over 200,000 apps that helps boost sales of their iPhone so Samsung are going to have to get some decent apps in and quick, however this isn’t an easy task.
Samsung aren’t yet that well known in the SmartPhone market, not like Apple, despite being the world’s second biggest mobile phone producer with 20 percent of the world market share.
Apple only have their own operating system whereas at the moment Samsung supports Symbian, Windows and Android and are now hoping to see their own Bada take off.
They also have to compete with Android of course which is becoming increasingly popular and which also has a healthy app store.
Yes, Samsung have to get moving if they want to seriously achieve their goal of trebling SmartPhone sales to around 18 million units this year and creating interesting apps will certainly help.
“We have a very strong response from application developers… and we see strong potential in bada to become a major operating system,” said Lee, who is in charge of developing Samsung’s own SmartPhone system.
Lee also told Reuters that Samsung are planning to launch ‘Wave’ in the UK and in Germany very soon. Wave is a high end SmartPhone based on the Bada operating system.
Samsung are now appealing to developers to create apps for Bada and are offering a £1.83 million incentive for developers who come up with the best apps as part of their Bada Developer Challenge.
First prize will be £200,000, second and third place will each receive in the region of £70,000 and £30,000 respectively, and other prizes of £20,000 will be offered to developers who come up with applications that are simple but effective. Any developer whose app enters the top 300 will receive the Wave SmartPhone free of charge.
The Samsung app store will open in June.
