Samsung’s announcement of its Tizen based smartphone came as a surprise for most people. This was due to the fact that the smartphone market had become a two-horse race, with Android and iOS being the horses, mind you, and new contenders were being thrashed out if not plummeted to their deaths.
But guess what, Samsung’s efforts in their Tizen based smartphone seem to have paid off as they have sold over a million of these handsets (i.e. the Samsung Z1) in India, which as a matter of fact, takes up 7 percent of the sub-$100 handset market of the country in the first six months of this year.
Although the number seems quite large, but if we compare it with its competition, the smartphone still has a long way to go. The Economic Times says that 2.8 million phones in the same sub-$100 market are sold in India monthly. Yeah, perspective does that to the seemingly successful Tizen phone (Poor guy).
This doesn’t deter the Korean giant though as they are planning on future phones with this OS on board. According to Reuters, Samsung will launch several new Tizen-powered handsets this year at various price points.
Various price points could well mean that we might have low-end (Like the Z1), mid-range and even high-end flagship phones coming from the company with Tizen on-chip.
One of the major obstacles Samsung is facing with the Tizen based devices is availability of apps. To counter this the company is trying to lure developers to build more apps for its Tizen phones by expanding the Tizen app store to 182 regions.
We can’t say for sure if the new contender in the smartphone (OS?) market will be able to run a long way, but one thing’s for certain, Samsung is putting all their possible effort in promoting this new breed of smartphones. Only time will tell if their effort will pay off.
