Samsung has delayed its first Tizen phone yet again (this one).
The official launch was to come at Thursday’s event for Tizen developers in Moscow, complete with market-ready products. But, in an echo of Samsung’s most recent failure to launch a Tizen smartphone – in Japan earlier this year – the launch was canceled just days earlier.
Samsung provided no concrete date for the rollout of the commercial version of the phone at the developer summit but said in a statement Thursday that “the smartphone will appear on the Russian market later, when we can offer our users a fullest portfolio of applications”.
While few people will care about this delay, there is one small group to whom this will be devastating news.
In all seriousness, nobody – not even Samsung itself – sees Tizen as a serious option or competitor to Android, and this news only serves to make that even clearer. Certain people keep trying to posit Tizen as some sort of huge threat to Android or as a sign that Samsung is seriously considering dumping Android (presumably thereby crippling Android and Google), but anyone with even the remotest bit of sense realises this makes about as much sense as a software patent.
No amount of wishful thinking is going to make Tizen happen.
Tizen/MeeGo/Maemo/Moblin/LiMo once again fails to deliver? I’m shocked. Shocked I say.
MeeGo (in the Harmattan incarnation) did deliver. It was a pretty good piece of software for its time. A couple of years behind the competition in parts, true, but also years ahead in others (Google Hangouts got integrated SMS and messaging just this year; the Nokia N9 had it for plenty of protocols). Nokia, however, failed to deliver on their promises.
People seem to forget how awfully buggy it was…
Mozilla is working on Firefox 2.0. And has handsets (Flame) on the market.
Still curious if they will manage to sell more than WebOS.
People from developed countries may not hear much news about Firefox OS because Mozilla is not targeting them. Firefox OS is already successful in third world countries and that’s the Mozilla’s initial target.
I recommend you to check Firefox OS 2.0 because from this version lot missing features are filled. Before that some basic features were missing. Secondly version 2.0 is aesthetically pleasing and have good performance.
There are Android already devices on similar price ranges.
Edited 2014-07-12 14:02 UTC
Not really: http://online.wsj.com/articles/mozilla-to-sell-25-smartphones-14024…
And besides low-end Android phones offer a pretty poor experience in comparison being mostly based around Android 2.3.
(full disclaimer: I work for Mozilla and specifically on FxOS)
With $50 you can already have a KitKat device,
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/mobiles/Indias-cheapest-And…
Even if for $25 the best is Android 2.3, it already offers a mix of Java and C++ support for native applications, all of which way better than so called web applications.
Plus all the native applications that matter.
That’s not really fair,android 2.3 is practically obsolete and newer versions will probably functon very sluggishly on the hardware FFOS targets.
On the other hand, once/if FFOS gets all the features Android has, it will probably be the same.
WTF? The LOWEST spec Android phone I’ve seen lately is running Android 4.1. Bottom of the range ($50-8100) prepaid Android phones sold in Australia have 800×480 screens, 512MB RAM and dual core CPUs. There are quad core phones selling for a just over $100 now.
By Xmas most entry level phones will be quad core running Kit Kat with 1GB RAM.
I know that Firefox OS 2.0 is still under development, but do you think it can already be used by people that don’t mind breaking their mobile phones once in a while?
You can use phones with Firefox OS preinstalled like Flame, Geeksphone Revolution, or ZTE Open C
The Firefox phones are nothing but existing bottom of the range Android models with Firefox OS installed instead. There is no logical reason to buy one unless you are a developer or want a new toy.
I do have a ZTE Open C, that was why I was asking if Firefox 2.0 was usable for testing purposes or if it’s better to wait until September.
Don’t install it on on your regular phone that you use for daily purposes. Better wait till the end of this year.
This whole Tizen story has all the signs of a few dead on arrival projects I witness when working in the telecommunications industry.
I might be very wrong, but I don’t believe it will ever succeed in the market.
Yeah, you’d be epically wrong. The odds of any of the next wave mobile platforms – Tizen, FirefoxOS, Ubuntu Touch, Jolla Sailfish – succeeding to the point of dethroning Android in the next 3 years is exceptionally small indeed, IMHO.
But I hope they succeed to the point of remaining viable, sharing web apps, and keeping Android from achieving a Windows-like monopoly. I’d hate for the mobile market to become as stagnant and boring as the desktop market became in the first decade of the 21st century.
Since I already commented and can’t upvote both of you, I’ll say my feelings are exactly the same.
An extra +1 for the “also rans”, they probably don’t need to dominate the market to be considered succesful, let’s hope perfection doesn’t get in the way of good enough
The goal of Tizen was to prevent Google becoming too vertically integrated and locking out Samsung. Samsung is now the de facto Android hardware maker and everyone is happy.
Should Google get too greedy Tizen will be wheeled out again.
Oh really ? At which Samsung Electronics division do you work that you’ve got such great “inside” info ?
Samsung is a 75 year old mega conglomerate that is involved in everything from hotels to pharmaceuticals. It will still be thriving long after Microsoft, Apple and Google have gone out of business.
I still maintain that Tizen, for Samsung, was really about cozying up to carriers who sponsored it, primarily NTT DoCoMo and China Mobile. From that perspective, it’s been a success.
Go to the Tizen Association web site and read the white papers. One will discover that it was both Intel and Samsung who spearheaded the project.
https://www.tizenassociation.org/vision/
Now recall what other project Intel and Samsung were huge partners in:
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/2010/20100408corp.h…
Tizen isn’t the anti-Android or anti-Google. Tizen is the continuing Intel and Samsung-led alliance “Oppose Qualcomm Forever” that also has drawn in various Japanese corporations.
Here’s what the Tizen Association is really afraid of: If everything in the future is really going to be connected and networked, then it will probably be done through the wireless cellphone network. And since Qualcomm has taken such a huge lead on LTE, it is not difficult to imagine a possible future where everything connected has to have Qualcomm chips in it. And Qualcomm designs their own ARM SoCs.
I wrote the following about a year ago about what Tizen actually is.
“Here’s a list of members of the Tizen Association:
https://www.tizenassociation.org/members/
Now if people had just been paying attention to what I have been saying for years, a lot of these names would look familiar and would be expected? What’s the connection between these companies and why is one company not on the list? It’s simple to anyone who knows computer history.
Tizen appears to be the OSF of the 2010s. As in the joke that OSF meant “Oppose Sun Forever” back when everyone in the Unix world was afraid Sun was going to establish a hegemony. They should call Tizen OQF because its membership list appears to be a who’s who of “Oppose Qualcomm Forever.”
Here’s an easy example explaining the names:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/01/ntt-fujitsu-nec-new-platform-par…
“The fractious on-again, off-again love affair between NTT DoCoMo, Fujitsu and NEC has taken another turn. After dissolving a partnership to build a common LTE platform that included Samsung and Panasonic …”
What an AMAZING coincidence that ALL FIVE of NTT DoComo, Fujitsu, NEC, Samsung, and Panasonic are all members of the Tizen Association. And who’d have possibly guessed that Intel and Sprint from WiMAX and Huawei would be in an association of companies that have an interest in LTE solutions beyond Qualcomm’s?”
Edited 2014-07-12 21:57 UTC