At the Tizen Developer Conference, currently being organized in San Francisco, Samsung has unveiled the next iteration of its in-house operating system. Called Tizen 4.0, this update of the platform is more robust and brings along a set of optimizations for IoT (Intenet of Things)-focused developers
The Tizen 4.0 OS is primarily aimed at extending the reach of the platform beyond traditional hardware devices, like smartphones or television sets. The Korean giant is now drawn towards the burgeoning scope of IoT and wearable technologies and is looking to integrate Tizen into such products — refrigerators, juicers, light bulbs and thermostats among others.
Speaking on the same, Hyogun Lee, Chair of the Tizen Technical Steering Group said:
Since launching, Tizen has become the OS for nearly all of Samsung’s products, and with its record of sales growth, proven itself as the most successful Linux-based embedded OS in the world. Among open collaborations, and as we enter the IoT era, we expect Tizen will open new opportunities for the future of IoT.
This integration has been made possible not because of the existing Linux-based version of the operating system but due to the introduction of Tizen RT (real-time) for smaller, lightweight devices. Talking about the same, the official blog post reads:
In addition, the Tizen 4.0 platform has been extended to Tizen RT (Real-Time) to involve high-end products such as TVs and mobile devices as well as low-end products such as thermostats, scales, bulbs, and more.
The operating system was initially developed for smartphones but Samsung extended Tizen OS to the smartwatch ecosystem with last year’s release of Gear S3 lineup. Ever since it has been gaining recognition and has already exceeded Android Wear by gaining an additional one percent market share in the global smartwatch ecosystem.
The lower-end Tizen-powered smartphones are also selling particularly well — adding to the growing popularity among consumers and acceptance of the ecosystem by developers. Samsung has just recently unveiled the latest Z Series smartphone, Z4, powered by Tizen 3.0 (should possibly bag the Tizen 4.0 update) in wake of the developer conference earlier this week.
Tizen 4.0 has further been optimized to enable rapid creation and commercialization of apps, where the development environment can be refined according to the needs and characteristics of various devices by subdividing functional modules. In addition, Tizen has partnered with Microsoft to enable you to easily develop apps for the platform using popular programming languages. The blog post mentions:
Microsoft .NET and Xamarin UI framework have been introduced to Tizen so that C# language-based applications can be developed in the Visual Studio environment for increased productivity.
