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Samsung will merge Bada OS into the Tizen project

Samsung will merge Bada OS into the Tizen project

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In an interview at CES 2012 this week, Samsung's Tae-Jin Kang has revealed his company's intention to fold Bada OS into the Intel-backed Tizen open source OS project.

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In an interview at CES 2012 this week, Samsung's Tae-Jin Kang has revealed his company's intention to fold Bada OS into the Intel-backed Tizen open source OS project. Bada is, or was, Samsung's homebrew effort at developing its own operating system, an effort that we were dubious about from the start. After failing to find much traction with its Wave handsets, Samsung is now wisely deciding to abandon hope of going it alone in the cutthroat mobile OS realm and is joining up with a development project that offers an opportunity for collaboration with others.

That's not to say that Tizen has much better prospects that Bada would've had on its own. Tizen is the new badge placed upon MeeGo, the formerly promising Linux-based OS that Intel and Nokia were going to rock our world with until Nokia decided Windows Phone offered a better shot at success. In truth, this is a coming together of two outsider projects that need to consolidate their powers if they're to stand any chance.

Samsung promises backwards compatibility with current Bada apps in its future integrated software product, as well as continued support for apps written using the Bada SDK. "At least one to two" Tizen-powered Samsung phones will come out this year, according to Forbes' quote of Tae-Jin Kang, though it appears the open source OS will figure in the lower portion of the company's portfolio. The true high end will remain dedicated to Android and Windows Phone for the foreseeable future.