Samsung announces Bada mobile OS, SDK sets sail in December
By Ross Miller 
posted Nov 10th 2009 12:21AM
posted Nov 10th 2009 12:21AM
Samsung bada – The Next Wave Of The Mobile Industry
Developers get the chance to create mobile applications for millions of new Samsung handsets
November 10th, 2009, Seoul, Korea– Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., a leading mobile phone provider, today announced the launch of its own open mobile platform, Samsung bada [bada] in December. This new addition to Samsung's mobile ecosystem enables developers to create applications for millions of new Samsung mobile phones, and consumers to enjoy a fun and diverse mobile experience.
In order to build a rich smartphone experience accessible to a wider range of consumers across the world, Samsung brings bada, a new platform with a variety of mobile applications and content.
The name 'bada', which means 'ocean' in Korean, was chosen to convey the limitless variety of potential applicationswhich can be created using the new platform. It also alludes to Samsung's commitment to a variety of open platforms in the mobile industry. Samsung bada also represents the fresh challenges and opportunities available to developers, as well as the entertainment which consumers will enjoy once the new platform is open.
Based on Samsung's experience in developing previous proprietary platforms on Samsung mobile phones, Samsung can create the new platform and provide opportunities for developers. Samsung bada is also simple for developers to use, meaning it's one of the most developer-friendly environments available, particularly in the area of applications using Web services. Lastly, bada's ground-breaking User Interface (UI) can be transferred into a sophisticated and attractive UI design for developers.
Samsung will be able to expand the range of choices for mobile phone users to enjoy the smartphone experiences. By adopting Samsung bada, users will be able to easily enjoy various applications on their mobile.
Samsung bada also offers an easy-to-integrate platform for mobile operators so that mobile operators can provide unique and differentiated services to their customers.
Samsung established its mobile application ecosystem through the launch of Samsung Mobile Innovator in 2008 and the Samsung Application Seller Site followed by Samsung Application Store as another key element of this offering.
Dr Hosoo Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of Media Solution Center at Samsung Electronics said, "By opening Samsung's mobile platforms we will be able to provide rich mobile experiences on an increasing number of accessible smartphones." He added, "bada will be Samsung's landmark, iconic new platform that brings an unprecedented opportunity for operators, developers and Samsung mobile phone users around the world."
The official website (www.bada.com) will open on November 10th and will feature a range of information on bada including updates on product launches, features, and event notices. Samsung will also host an official launch event for bada in London, UK in December and will also unveil its bada software development kit (SDK) to developers for the first time on this date.
About Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductor, telecommunication, digital media and digital convergence technologies with 2008 consolidated sales of US$96 billion. Employing approximately 164,600 people in 179 offices across 61 countries, the company consists of two business units: Digital Media & Communications and Device Solutions. Recognized as one of the fastest growing global brands, Samsung Electronics is a leading producer of digital TVs, memory chips, mobile phones and TFT-LCDs. For more information, please visit www.samsung.com
Developers get the chance to create mobile applications for millions of new Samsung handsets
November 10th, 2009, Seoul, Korea– Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., a leading mobile phone provider, today announced the launch of its own open mobile platform, Samsung bada [bada] in December. This new addition to Samsung's mobile ecosystem enables developers to create applications for millions of new Samsung mobile phones, and consumers to enjoy a fun and diverse mobile experience.
In order to build a rich smartphone experience accessible to a wider range of consumers across the world, Samsung brings bada, a new platform with a variety of mobile applications and content.
The name 'bada', which means 'ocean' in Korean, was chosen to convey the limitless variety of potential applicationswhich can be created using the new platform. It also alludes to Samsung's commitment to a variety of open platforms in the mobile industry. Samsung bada also represents the fresh challenges and opportunities available to developers, as well as the entertainment which consumers will enjoy once the new platform is open.
Based on Samsung's experience in developing previous proprietary platforms on Samsung mobile phones, Samsung can create the new platform and provide opportunities for developers. Samsung bada is also simple for developers to use, meaning it's one of the most developer-friendly environments available, particularly in the area of applications using Web services. Lastly, bada's ground-breaking User Interface (UI) can be transferred into a sophisticated and attractive UI design for developers.
Samsung will be able to expand the range of choices for mobile phone users to enjoy the smartphone experiences. By adopting Samsung bada, users will be able to easily enjoy various applications on their mobile.
Samsung bada also offers an easy-to-integrate platform for mobile operators so that mobile operators can provide unique and differentiated services to their customers.
Samsung established its mobile application ecosystem through the launch of Samsung Mobile Innovator in 2008 and the Samsung Application Seller Site followed by Samsung Application Store as another key element of this offering.
Dr Hosoo Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of Media Solution Center at Samsung Electronics said, "By opening Samsung's mobile platforms we will be able to provide rich mobile experiences on an increasing number of accessible smartphones." He added, "bada will be Samsung's landmark, iconic new platform that brings an unprecedented opportunity for operators, developers and Samsung mobile phone users around the world."
The official website (www.bada.com) will open on November 10th and will feature a range of information on bada including updates on product launches, features, and event notices. Samsung will also host an official launch event for bada in London, UK in December and will also unveil its bada software development kit (SDK) to developers for the first time on this date.
About Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductor, telecommunication, digital media and digital convergence technologies with 2008 consolidated sales of US$96 billion. Employing approximately 164,600 people in 179 offices across 61 countries, the company consists of two business units: Digital Media & Communications and Device Solutions. Recognized as one of the fastest growing global brands, Samsung Electronics is a leading producer of digital TVs, memory chips, mobile phones and TFT-LCDs. For more information, please visit www.samsung.com
If it's not open source, I don't want to hear about it.
This sounds Badass, but knowing Samsung and its crippled Instincts and awkward Moments I deem it's going to Fail!
Samsung! just stick with making phones and if you wanna get in software do something like HTC with their Sense.
Remember windows 7 is coming soon and Android is already Big, I doubt you would have a chance,
UNLESS You allow having this OS with other OS's on the same Phone, sort of like Ubuntu and window, OPEN this Locked Platform
Samsung apparently has money to waste on OS development. Investors are probably wondering why...given how poorly Palm has done with WebOS.
Thanks Samsung
now I have more options to choose from
but for now i will just purchase one of your cheap msg phones until i get the money for the big boy's
I already dread my current Samsung headset with its POS OS...will not invest in another Samsung handset, ever.
This. Amazing The impression the Instinct left on many of us.
OOH!
Can we have a partnership with MS? bada-bing!
Mad you beat me to this....
[/shaking fist]
This comment deserves a new ranking - "Higherest Ranked!!!111eleven"
Boom. Beeeeeeg Bada Boom!
Now we need to find a company named Boom...
Bada Bing and Bada Boom
Like this one, perhaps?! http://www.badaboomit.com/
> the name means "ocean" in Korean
And it means... BAD in the other 99% of the world.
Hey... what's the OS on your new phone?
It's crapi... that's Swahili for butterfly.
i did a google translate..kipepeo is butterfly in swahili
status = told.
I didn't know 99% of the world spoke English.
Brilliant, because in English, Ocean means, "totally slick new mobile OS"
*whisper whisper
Oh, it just means huge volume of water filled with predators, and if you spend too much time inside, without the proper life support systems , you'll die?
Oh, that's much better.
*** Holds up hand. ***
That's very kind of you, but no. No thank you.
I will take one of your fine television sets though!
I just KNEW we were missing something. Another mobile OS.
Well. May the best OS win.
"You've gotta get up close like this and - bada-BING! - you blow their brains all over your nice Ivy League suit. C'mere... "
I was going to get Omnia 2 then it was pushed back forever. Now with Android 2.0 on the Droid, Omnia 2 is looking obsolete even with it's beautiful OLED screen. They should have released it when it was ready and I would've been stuck with a 2 year contract.
Even if Bada is open source, how many open source OS's do we really need?
I don't think yet another mobile OS is such a bad thing really. In the long run, 99% of mobiles will end up with one of three OSs. Right now the competition will drive innovation as it did in the early days of computing when every hardware vendor had their own OS.
For example, I'm not exactly interested in the Pre but I am interested in some of its features. Those features will eventually find their way in the a mobile OS I do use, and so by virtue of Pre's existence I still win.
bada's has gotta be a badass os! oh yes! but could be just gas... and a mess...
ouch that sucks, means it will have no apps
If we have to have another mobile OS, the Samsung is one of the few companies I'd like it from.
Both Sammy and HTC seem to be good at adding a layer on top of other OSes.
If this is their next featurephone os then it actually makes sense... but using it instead of android/winmo/symbian they are crazy!!
I had that exact same thought. Wasn't Samsung a MAJOR partner with Microsoft and Windows Mobile 6.5? And aren't they launching a few Android devices in the near-ish future? And I know they have done a few Symbian phones, namely the innov8...
If this leads to slightly smarter dumb phones, I am game. But even if not, I can't fault them for putting a few eggs in a each of several baskets.
After owning 3 samsung phones, I got my bars set REALLY low for this one!
you know what you should do?
buy another samsung phone.... that'll show those bastards.
i agree using it instead of android/winmo/symbian is crazy but they have to do it
why do they have to? why waste money developing something when there are free alternatives?
It's nice when you own a phone for which they abandon the OS so quickly. Yay Impression!
Really?!
Aww horseshit!
Sounds like Samsung have too much free time or something. They're already doing Winmo, S60, and Android phones. Now they are doing their own OS? Hey Samsung, how about focusing on churning out Android 2.0 phones, and releasing them in the US on time?
hey, you took the words from my mouth.
Samsung shouldn't waste its time. It would do well to strengthen its existing alliances.
By the way, OS is not an end in itself. From where will the applications come? And Samsung isn't Nokia. I mean it doesn't have the market size to attract developers to its OS.
At best, it could be a ploy to ensure that Google releases the source code of the latest versions of the Android OS to all the partners of the Open Handset Alliance rather than letting it out selectively. Android 2.0, for instance, is available to Motorola only.
What ever happened to the samsung HD phone that ran symbian OS? was it ever released? I remember it was supposed to shoot 720p video?
It's called Omnia HD, and It was released 6 months ago.
http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i8910_omnia_hd-2691.php
In a sense it is a good idea - there's no way they'd be able to introduce a new OS 2 or 3 years down the line, right? Now's pretty much their only shot, and even though they have little hope of winning going up against MS, Google, Palm, Nokia, and everyone else, it'd be worth it even if they only got 3rd or even 4th place.
It's going to be a POS like their other OS's.
Any idea if its going to be Nucleos RTOS based or not?
I'm not putting any faith in Samsung to deliver user friendly software.
ss
In Hindi; bada = big. hmmmm it's close
Actually if you read the press release carefully, it never mentions a new OS.
It's probably a set of SDK and tools for developing applications on their proprietary OS.
Samsung has been advertising and pushing it's Jet phone a lot recently. I think Bada is a set of tools and SDK for whatever OS is running on that (SHP I think).
Engadget has a habit of doing that... they once reported that Nokia and Intel where making a new mobile OS called oFono... had they read the release correctly they would have seen that it wasn't at all an OS but a bunch of components for building telephony apps on linux
This isn't the first news of Samsung's new OS - http://phandroid.com/2009/11/09/30-of-samsung-phones-to-run-android-in-2010/
samsung os (SOS)....it is going to be a disaster, actually i prefer a new UI of android instead...
I think it is a good idea since there are a lot samsung fans and for them it will provide additional software
STUPID Samsung. Do normal android phone with Tegra or SnappyDragon, but, of course, let's make another OS, so developers will make software for it. It's ridiculous! Some years ago we had Java, so all the programms were actually the same for different phones, but we've got Java, WinMo, WinMo for non-touchscreen smartphones, WebOS for pre-Palm and pixi-Palm, OSX for iphone, Android, Maemo for Nokla N900, Symbian for old-nokies-samsungs-ericssons. It's 8 mobile oses and im sure that i forgot some more. Even computers have less oses (if we put all those great linux-based oses together). U guys, CEOs, doing it wrong!
I think it's actually a clear move for Sammy. They've already proved they can put the Sense UI (even if it's pretty crappy right now) on top of different OS's - WinMo, Android and probably Symbian. It seems that they want to kinda "bundle" their UI layer (and its API) with all the phones they make, no matter which OS they ship with. In the end, everyone who has a Sammy phone will be able to download and use apps from Sammy's store, regardless of the builtin OS.
No Sense UI in any Samsung. It's called Touchwiz and in my opinion it's very bad.
No comparison to HTC's Sense UI.
I actually like the LiMO Operating System Lots. If you saw youtube videos of the Samsung H1, the touchscreen was VERY sensitive with no lagginess whatsoever. I definitely think LiMO needs to be pushed more by the mainstream, because the software is quite excellent and of course, it's an open source system..
As for Samsung themselves. If they want to be leaders in the smartphone gold mine they need to do to this.
1. Stop selling hardware to your competitors, unless the competitor is willing to pay a BIG price for it. 500 million dollars for flash ram is small potatoes.
2. Continue to us Android and support it with the latest advanced smart phones. Android will be supported in the future. With Samsung's OLED, 8MP, Optical Zoom, FLASH RAM, Battery technology, they clearly have a HARDWARE advantage compared to the rest of the field.
3. Continue to support Windows. Next year, Windows mobile 7 will come out. I bet the software will support 16 million colors. As well, WM7 will feature capacitive touchscreens. That will be great for Samsung, since they already have the hardware advantage compared to the rest of the field.
4. Support LiMO. It's a great Operating system. Continue to push Application support for LiMO
I actually like the LiMO Operating System Lots. If you saw youtube videos of the Samsung H1, the touchscreen was VERY sensitive with no lagginess whatsoever. I definitely think LiMO needs to be pushed more by the mainstream, because the software is quite excellent and of course, it's an open source system..
As for Samsung themselves. If they want to be leaders in the smartphone gold mine they need to do to this.
1. Stop selling hardware to your competitors, unless the competitor is willing to pay a BIG price for it. 500 million dollars for flash ram is small potatoes.
2. Continue to us Android and support it with the latest advanced smart phones. Android will be supported in the future. With Samsung's OLED, 8MP, Optical Zoom, FLASH RAM, Battery technology, they clearly have a HARDWARE advantage compared to the rest of the field.
3. Continue to support Windows. Next year, Windows mobile 7 will come out. I bet the software will support 16 million colors. As well, WM7 will feature capacitive touchscreens. That will be great for Samsung, since they already have the hardware advantage compared to the rest of the field.
4. Support LiMO. It's a great Operating system. Continue to push Application support for LiMO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGbMsH6i60A
5. Invest tons of money into BADA(SS). make sure tons of applications like epocrates, dictionaries, and enterntainment applications will be easily downloadable onto the Virgin OS that Samsung is trying to get into. I don't mean spend millions for the OS. Samsung, you got to spend hundreds of millions to make the OS, smooth, lag-free, easy to use, and Application supported.
Sorry, cut and paste is going crazy on me... here is a more refined version.
I actually like the LiMO Operating System Lots. If you saw youtube videos of the Samsung H1, the touchscreen was VERY sensitive with no lagginess whatsoever. I definitely think LiMO needs to be pushed more by the mainstream, because the software is quite excellent and of course, it's an open source system..
As for Samsung themselves. If they want to be leaders in the smartphone gold mine they need to do to this.
1. Stop selling hardware to your competitors, unless the competitor is willing to pay a BIG price for it. 500 million dollars for flash ram is small potatoes.
2. Continue to use Android and support Android with the latest advanced smart phones. Android will be supported in the future, with lots of applications. With Samsung's OLED, 8MP, Optical Zoom, FLASH RAM, Battery technology, they clearly have a HARDWARE advantage compared to the rest of the field.
3. Continue to support Windows. Next year, Windows mobile 7 will come out. I bet the software will support 16 million colors. As well, WM7 will feature capacitive touchscreens. That will be great for Samsung, since they already have the hardware advantage compared to the rest of the field.
4. Support LiMO. It's a great Operating system. Continue to push Application support for LiMO. I think LiMO is just as competitive as OS X.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGbMsH6i60A
5. Invest tons of money into BADA(SS). Make sure tons of applications like epocrates, dictionaries, and enterntainment applications will be easily downloadable onto the Virgin OS that Samsung is trying to get into. I don't mean spend millions for the OS. Samsung, you got to spend hundreds of millions to make the OS, smooth, lag-free, easy to use, and Application supported.
LiMO stands for Linux Mobile.
Bada will probably be an evolution on LiMO..
Open Source of course. And Samsung is willing to spend the $$$ for Application support which is SMART.
I was thinking about getting the upcoming Behold II.... this really makes me worried that they are going to abandon it once released.
Why would they abandon the behold II? The phone is android and when the latest firmware update is released for Android 2.0, Samsung will probably release it on their website.
Nada.
so is this just a featurephone OS, or...
Not another new Mobile OS!. Android 2.0 is the new "star" child looking like it could kick the iPhone in due time. WebOS is a strong under-dog disadvantaged by Palm which is a small player compared to the rest. LiMO needs to come of age to displace WinMO (sorry WinMo fans but WM7 could save it but I do not think the market can wait that long...)
Symbian is dead dead deader ... or ditched to "second-class" status on low-end handsets. SO Sammy, why not buy Palm and give us many variants of GSM/HSPA Pixies at lower prices and put back wifi there. This could just send the Nokia handsets (mid-to-lower end models) to their early graves!. So that's revenue potential enough.
SO guys, if SamSung rides on Android 2 and WebOS, it could be a serious market leader. But they got to buy Palm or somehow license WebOS. Make sense ?. I think so.