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Samsung's future is Tizen, not Android

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Re: Samsung's future is Tizen, not Android

#61

Post by 15charusername »

Don't forget Samsung produce more than just phones, even if Tizen doesn't take off for phones, Samsung do a lot of other embedded Linux stuff.

As for Tizen's success on phones, apart from lower end devices (where you probably don't want many custom apps just a solid base, symbian style), I see the appeal of all you're devices (TV, Fridge, Car, etc) running a consistent UI with plenty of magic and auto-configuration running behind the scenes and I'm not seeing many low end devices with Android yet.

Re: Samsung's future is Tizen, not Android

#62

Post by RyanZAG »

fakeer wrote: post #58
RyanZAG wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Far as I can tell, those clauses are specifically related to the Android trademark / Google Apps / etc. Creating a full fork (of the publicly available source) as allowed by the Apache license with different name and no direct relation to Android should be just as good as creating Tizen. I guess the sticky point here is the closed-source early access releases that Samsung gets. Google must be threatening access to th…

I doubt Tizen will take off . Samsung's software prowess is nowhere near to companies making and capable of making world class/sophisticated OS(or mobile OS). There is a lot of things that goes against Samsung which is in the company's DNA (culturally embedded it) and those are the things that hinder innovation and cutting edge research(esp. from s/w research perspective). (Probably the same things actually help them…

Great points. I think that helps me fill in a few gaps in what Samsung might be thinking here.

Google has threatened that Samsung lose support if they fork Android. They might or might not actually do it - Samsung is a major Android player. The threat is still enough that Samsung have chosen not to try forking Android.

However, Samsung still wants more control. The solution is to use Tizen with Android compatibility to try and wrest that control from Google, but while still acting within the boundaries Google have given them. If Tizen doesn't take off then Samsung can just fall back on Google Android. If Tizen does take off, then they now have enough weight to push Google around as they wish.

Google isn't worried about Tizen as they believe that Samsung will not be able to out code them, and that Android apps running on Tizen will not be as good as Android apps running on Android. While I'm sure that Google would prefer if Samsung wasn't trying out Tizen, they believe they have a strong enough bet that Tizen will fail and Samsung will come crawling back anyway.

So the whole situation now makes a lot of sense from both Google and Samsung's side. From this we can probably take away that Tizen will get the best hardware first to give it more chance of taking off. Also, Google is likely to try and add new services in future Android versions that will make it more difficult to run Android apps on other platforms. Interesting and falsifiable, in a year's time we can see if these predictions are true!

Anybody think I've got way on/off track here?

Re: Samsung's future is Tizen, not Android

#63

Post by OGinparadise »

kyrra wrote: post #55
OGinparadise wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Tizen takes off, you can expect Google to drop Samsung's access to early release builds in any event as Google will then try to force customers to use Moto/LG/HTC/etc devices. The HN gods banned me for saying bad things about Google, but I have one word for you: antitrust.

Which part of antitrust law would the government use against Google in this case? Google does not hold a monopoly and they are not price-fixing anything. They may be accused of anticompetitive behavior, but unless Google does something very irrational I don't see that happening.

Check Android market shares on smartphones all over the world and see what you get. Google escaped Search scrutiny in US by buying off lots of politicians with tens of millions in lobbying but they'd get crushed if they blackmailed Samsung over Tizen.

Re: Samsung's future is Tizen, not Android

#64

Post by wildster »

fakeer wrote: post #58
RyanZAG wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Far as I can tell, those clauses are specifically related to the Android trademark / Google Apps / etc. Creating a full fork (of the publicly available source) as allowed by the Apache license with different name and no direct relation to Android should be just as good as creating Tizen. I guess the sticky point here is the closed-source early access releases that Samsung gets. Google must be threatening access to th…

I doubt Tizen will take off . Samsung's software prowess is nowhere near to companies making and capable of making world class/sophisticated OS(or mobile OS). There is a lot of things that goes against Samsung which is in the company's DNA (culturally embedded it) and those are the things that hinder innovation and cutting edge research(esp. from s/w research perspective). (Probably the same things actually help them…

I just got an upgrade on a Sony Xperia J from their version of 4.0 to their version of 4.1.

Re: Samsung's future is Tizen, not Android

#65

Post by mrich »

msabalau wrote: post #42
shadowmint wrote: post #11

"For most Samsung smartphone owners, TouchWiz is Android, and since Tizen could easily get a TouchWiz-like user interface, the average consumer wouldn't notice a thing." You've got to be kidding. Do you remember the demo? www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ1y7CpIaVA Smooth. :/ To be fair, I'm sure they're working on the UI, but UI is something that's hard to get right. It took android what, 4 years to reach a point where it's…

"TouchWiz is Android" in the same way green paint is the performance by Mila Kunas in "Oz the Great and Powerful". I'm a very happy owner of a Galaxy Note II, but nearly everything Samsung did on the software side is value subtracting. (Nearly, but not all: I do like the way I can capture a screenshot by moving my palm across the screen as if I'm a photocopier.)

I find smart stay and the multi windowing very helpful.

Re: Samsung's future is Tizen, not Android

#66

Post by hbharadwaj »

uchi wrote: post #51
RyanZAG wrote: post #4

While I'm sure Samsung would love to replace Android with Tizen, I doubt they will actually be able to do it. While Apple and Google make it appear easy to create an OS that users enjoy using, the reality is that it is incredibly difficult. Just look at Windows Phone - I'm fairly sure that Microsoft is more able to create a technically superior OS to Samsung, and I think the amount of money Microsoft has poured into…

"Yet Windows Phone is a dismal failure even with Nokia's huge manufacturing bulk behind it. The only sensible conclusion I can come to is that making a desirable mobile OS is far more difficult than it appears, and that there are numerous 'below the water line' effects that make a mobile OS popular." I don't have any empirical data to back this up, but in my personal opinion a large reason why Windows Phone just isn'…

I agree with your branding conclusion. That maybe primarily one of the reasons why Nokia is going big on the Lumia branding that a WP8 branding.

Android does not have support on a lot of phones beyond the original version which comes with the phone. The only problem for MS is the fact they spell out the fact that old phones can't be upgraded due to a kernel change which end consumers don't understand. Upgrade options are available on Android only because of the hacker community.

The rest of your post is just your opinion on Android v/s WP8. So, no comments.

Re: Samsung's future is Tizen, not Android

#67

Post by smacktoward »

uchi wrote: post #51
RyanZAG wrote: post #4

While I'm sure Samsung would love to replace Android with Tizen, I doubt they will actually be able to do it. While Apple and Google make it appear easy to create an OS that users enjoy using, the reality is that it is incredibly difficult. Just look at Windows Phone - I'm fairly sure that Microsoft is more able to create a technically superior OS to Samsung, and I think the amount of money Microsoft has poured into…

"Yet Windows Phone is a dismal failure even with Nokia's huge manufacturing bulk behind it. The only sensible conclusion I can come to is that making a desirable mobile OS is far more difficult than it appears, and that there are numerous 'below the water line' effects that make a mobile OS popular." I don't have any empirical data to back this up, but in my personal opinion a large reason why Windows Phone just isn'…

"Microsoft is associated with corporation and money and monopoly."

This is a good point, but I think it'd be closer to the mark to say that Microsoft is associated with work.

People are often forced to use Microsoft products when they are at work. They frequently have little say in how these products are selected or configured. They're told that The Company has made those decisions for them, so they should just shut up and learn to love them, all hail The Company.

This is not an association that will make people leap joyfully to buy the same products when they are deciding what to spend their personal money on.

This is part of why I have been baffled at MS's insistence on branding Windows 8 and Windows Phone, both of which they desperately want individual consumers to buy into, as "Windows" products. Windows is work. Products to be sold to individuals need to be positioned more like play to be appealing.

Re: Samsung's future is Tizen, not Android

#68

Post by Zigurd »

objclxt wrote: post #25
shadowmint wrote: post #11

"For most Samsung smartphone owners, TouchWiz is Android, and since Tizen could easily get a TouchWiz-like user interface, the average consumer wouldn't notice a thing." You've got to be kidding. Do you remember the demo? www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ1y7CpIaVA Smooth. :/ To be fair, I'm sure they're working on the UI, but UI is something that's hard to get right. It took android what, 4 years to reach a point where it's…

I am one of the few people who's had the (mis)fortune of developing for Bada, one of Tizen's predecessors. For a while, I was using a Wave 3, which was basically a nicer Galaxy S2 running Bada (I could never quite understand why Samsung went to the trouble of designing a very nice metal unibody handset and then saddling it with Bada). People in the office who weren't developers would on occasion pick up the Wave and…

Android is a lot more than look & feel. In fact Android was pretty homely looking at first. But it was always beautiful on the inside.

Android is apps that share UI, using intent filters that launch Activity objects. Android is a Java VM, including a unique bytecode, and jit and gc, and that's good at multiprocessing, and that's appropriate for battery powered devices.

A lookalike launcher that launches apps written in C++ that can't do what Android apps do is not going to make any headway in the market. In fact it is kind of silly to emulate Android's launcher style. There is nothing, apart from familiarity, that makes it especially good.

Android's app runtime technology has become the de facto client Java technology. Anything that is going to credibly compete has to have something at least as compelling going for it.

Re: Samsung's future is Tizen, not Android

#69

Post by sverige »

sverige wrote: post #41

I am an early adopter when it makes sense. Smartphones have never made sense to me as a replacement for my desktop machine. I only recently switched to a smartphone because my trusty Nokia finally died. It made phone calls very well, by the way, and worked OK for texting and keeping a calendar, which are the three things that I mostly use the "smartphone" for. So, I recognize that I'm not like most here, but maybe th…

Apparently NetBSD has an effort to port to the Nokia N900; see e.g., http://www.bsdcan.org/2013/schedule/events/381.en.html so maybe I'll go that route.
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