It is clear that 2010’s key handset trend will be the extension of smartphone hallmarks – open OS, downloadable apps, touchscreens and customizable complex interfaces – to mass market devices. This is mainly expected to happen with the shrinking down of classic smartphones running Android, Symbian or other operating systems, but Samsung is seeking the upper hand with a multi-OS approach, introducing a software layer and store it calls Bada, which could be targeted at sub-$100 phones with smartphone-like behaviour.
Samsung says Bada will open up its various operating systems to developers, including the proprietary one that runs on its midrange (and some high end) models, and will eventually enable them to create applications once, and run and sell them on multiple platforms, including Android, LiMo and its own SHP (still its major platform). Samsung also supports Symbian and Windows Mobile but it is not clear whether these will be included in the system.
The Korean firm, whose growing market share is driven mainly from the low end, has a clear interest in controlling how open apps get to that level of the market. It hopes to release the first phones running Bada – which means ‘ocean’ in Korean – in the first half of 2010 and the platform will be the basis of an extensive roll-out across all territories.
Bada provides a software layer that runs on top of SHP, but goes further than a widget-based user interface like Samsung TouchWiz – by opening the whole software platform to third party developers rather than just making certain selected apps available via a widget engine.
To perform the difficult feat of attracting programmer support – split between an increasingly large number of platforms – Samsung is running developer days in Seoul, London and San Francisco in December and January, but its real appeal to third parties may lie in the future ability to span multiple OSs in the same way that Java or Flash do. Samsung will also have to convince carriers that they want to support yet another user experience, and some of its opportunities may potentially lie in allowing for carrier customization, as HTC Sense will do.
It also hopes to get operators onside by providing an application store that they can brand, and which can span all the OSs they choose to support – avoiding the conflicts of interest carriers can have with single-vendor stores like Apple’s. Last month, Donjoo Lee, senior VP of sales and marketing for the mobile business, outlined Samsung’s overall app store approach in an interview: “We can install our app store within the operator’s storefront in a shop-in-shop arrangement, or if it’s a small operator that doesn’t have its own app store or the resources to develop one, we can provide our app store platform to them on a white label basis so they can put their name on it.” The Bada store will appear around mid-2010, initially in about 30 countries including the UK, France and Italy, as well as Korea.
The Bada SDK (software developer kit) will become available in December and, Samsung says, will major on ease of use and on allowing for operator customized services. Samsung said that the OS will have a next generation user interface, though we may expect this to be grounded in TouchWiz, and it will aim to create a common experience across apps. It will support service-oriented features and programmers will be able to incorporate features like a phone’s dialer, messaging capabilities and address book into their products.
Samsung has made its bid for a dominant software platform rather late and has a poor track record in the user experience, but its powerful position in the midmarket may lure developers and its influence on emerging markets like China cannot be dismissed, especially if it can create a software environment that brings smartphone-like qualities to really cheap handsets. This would be the real impact of Bada, creating a tier of webphones below the Android or Symbian midmarket, going beyond the reach of the high end phonemakers into the markets where Samsung’s scale is a necessity to compete. Bada is likely to be focused mainly on phones in the $80 to $200 price range unsubsidized. Nokia, of course, is going for the same space with Ovi, but its efforts are spearheaded more by specific apps such as Life Tools.