Tags: Samsung, Bada
Just as promised, today Samsung showed the
world their new smartphone operating system
called Bada. At an event, held in London, the
Korean company revealed the first details about
the upcoming platform and gave the start to the
developers challenge that should create a good
application base for the future Bada users.
The new Bada OS is all touch
The Bada OS is based around on Samsung
proprietary TouchWiz User Interface - in fact the
design mockups they've presented at the event
were pretty much similar to the Samsung
Pixon12 UI.
Designed for use on full-touch handsets only,
Bada OS should help create “a smartphone for
everyone” and increase the market share of the
smartphones up to 50 percent.
Being a fully-fledged smartphone platform
though, Bada will allow developers to tap into the
various mobile phone features and sensors -
Flash UI, web control, motion sensing, vibration
control, face detection, weather, proximity, and
other activity sensors. Obviously developers
should have no problems developing immersive
and interactive applications.
Samsung Bada OS presentation
Samsung have highlighted the various service-
centric features as the Bada OS differentiator.
Those would location-based social networking
services, device synchronization, content
management, location-based services, and e-
commerce services - all supported by back-end
Bada servers.
Samsung Bada OS presentation
As you'll see from the 4-minute presentation
video below, at this point Samsung are reaching
mainly towards developers, not cellphone users.
Samsung are hoping that getting the developers
support will get a head start for their new OS.
They've setup a dedicated Bada developers
website and have already put up the Bada SDK
for download.
And the Bada Challenge is up
Today also marks the start of "The Bada
Challenge", which is what Samsung will call their
developers' contest. It gives developers a chance
to win a part of a 2,700,000 US dollars prize fund
by submitting an app for the new OS.
In an attempt to create a large applications
database for the new Bada platform, Samsung
will also have a series of Developer Days that will
take place across the world during 2010. Open to
all developers, the initial events will be held in
Seoul, London and San Francisco, with more
events following as the year progresses.
Further on, Samsung have secured the
partnership of key players in the mobile software
industry. EA Mobile, Capcom, Gameloft, Konami
were some of the bigger names mentioned at the
event. Some of them even had high-standing
representatives attending the London event to
attest their support to the Bada cause.
Samsung have secured the partnership of
some serious companies
Samsung will have a Bada application store,
which would allow even non-registered users to
buy applications and app payments with the
mobile phone bill. With the launch of the first
Bada phone, the Samsung application store will
be expanded to cover up to 50 countries. The
second half of 2010 shouild see the store expand
worldwide.
We were able to shoot a demo video of some of
the applications and games Samsung Bada OS
partners are developing for the new OS.
And the first Bada smartphone to come is...
The company seems pretty determined to make
this new platform work. We are yet to see its
implementation. Samsung are promising their
first and only handset (for now) to come in the
first half of 2010.
With the first Bada handset, Samsung will be
focusing the high performance segment and
large sale numbers to widen the user base as
quickly as possible. It's similar to what Nokia did
with their Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.
It will be their next Bada smartphones to cater for
the lower segments of the market and reaching
even further as one of the Bada slogans suggests:
"Smartphones for everyone".
And a few words for closing
Somehow we couldn't help but notice that
Samsung have been diligently taking presentation
cues from Apple. Even the slides were designed
matching some of those used by Apple when
they first announced iPhone OS 2.0 and 3.0 back
in the day. There's certainly nothing wrong about
that, Apple are among the best in business when
it comes to putting up a nice presentation.
We also really hope that Samsung will match
Apple's success in promoting the new OS and
developing its application and user base.