Samsung reportedly slowing down Tizen development to fend off Android competition

A report by DigiTimes claims that Samsung has slowed down development on its Tizen operating system, which it is co-developing with Intel, in order to keep the Android competition at bay, competition that would move in to steal some of Samsung’s market share once the company began focusing on Tizen and possibly reduce dependence on Android.

According to industry sources:

Samsung Electronics reportedly has slowed down the development of its Tizen operating system, which it co-developed with Intel – a move which could dash hopes of other Android smartphone vendors expecting to grab market share from the Korea-based vendor once it began shifting to Tizen.

This isn’t surprising – Android currently runs on almost 80% of all mobile devices, and Samsung has the largest cut of that market share. Once Tizen devices launch, some resources will no doubt be shifted to focus on the new OS if Samsung wants it to succeed and become a viable choice in the smartphone wars, which would give a chance to competitors like HTC, Motorola, LG, Huawei and the like to make a push for better sales and presence of their own devices.

It might also be a reason why the first Tizen smartphone was delayed to a launch for the fourth quarter of 2013. Samsung surely isn’t going to switch to Tizen like people believe, and while they’ll market Tizen with the same glitz and glamour they’ve marketed Android with, it looks like they will take their own time in getting Tizen to market at a time when they’re enjoying so much success riding on Google’s free and open source OS.

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