Tizen – Suspended animation.

In mobile, Tizen has no future while Android lives.

• Tizen is an operating system for mobile phones, tablets, smart TVs and in-vehicle infotainment.
• The platform is jointly owned by Intel and Samsung and it has long history of mergers and of being passed around the technology industry,
• Tizen’s roots come from LiMo (Mobile Linux industry consortium) which in itself was the product of the merger of other struggling industry consortia from over 5 years ago.
• When Intel left the MeeGo project and joined up with Samsung, LiMo was renamed Tizen.
• Intel is using the platform for smart TVs and automotive but Samsung is trying to use it to make smartphones.
• In areas outside of mobile, Tizen has possibilities as third-party ecosystems are less important as the use of those devices is much narrower.
• Tizen has no ecosystem and it has no services to offer a user to fulfil his daily activities on a smartphone.
• Hence it was of no surprise to hear that Samsung has yet again delayed the launch of its first Tizen device.
• I suspect that this is due to the fact that there are no applications for a user to download.
• Samsung and Intel have launched a joint competition for developers to develop applications for the device following the release of the SDK in July 2013.
• The competition closes in November 2013 upon which I would expect developers to take the money and run.
• This is just another way of paying developers to write applications and is a sign of desperation on the part of Tizen’s owners.
• When it has got some applications, then there is a possibility for Samsung to launch a device.
• However, I think that Tizen is simply an insurance policy for Samsung as it makes no sense for it to start up with another operating system when it dominates the world with Android and earns 15-20% margins in the process.
• The problem is that everybody knows this and so commitment to Tizen remains almost non-existent and I suspect that when a phone is launched, volumes shipped will be less than a rounding error.
• Samsung will keep it alive just in case but until Samsung needs it, Tizen is going nowhere.