First Tizen smartphone to be released in second quarter of 2014

Well, after a couple of months of silence, talk about the first Tizen phone has surfaced again. According to Reuters, Yoon Han-kil, senior vice president of Samsung's product strategy team, has said that the first Tizen smartphone would be launching in the second quarter of this year, and that it would be a high-end model. The company had tried to launch a Tizen device with carriers DoCoMo and Orange, but “couldn't because of poor market conditions”, but it is willing to try again and will focus on a few countries where it “can do well.”

The high-end model will be followed by a mid-range device that will be focused on the mass market. However, Yoon confirmed that Samsung's main business will continue to be Android. That isn't surprising given how tough it is for new OS to make a dent in a market dominated by iOS and Android, with both offering great ecosystems that make it hard for people to move to another OS. Tizen would have to account for “up to 15 percent of Samsung's total smartphone shipments to become a successful platform,” according to Samsung, though whether it can achieve that any time soon is something that remains to be seen.

Well, there's also the question of whether Samsung will be able to meet the launch deadline this time around, so we'll just have to wait a few months to see what happens.