Samsung to strengthen their “ software prowess ”

Samsung released a statement claiming that they are
looking to strengthen their “ software prowess ” and
that they will be focusing on enhancing their
“competitive edge in the Internet of Things (IoT)
industry and increase synergies for the Tizen
platform.”
Tizen is an operating system that Samsung has been
developing for years in the hope that the open-source
platform would one day be able to compete with an
operating system such as Android. Unfortuately, as
this site has discussed on a number of different
occasions, Tizen has been through a number of delays
and has yet to be featured on a smartphone, although
recent reports suggest that Samsung will be releasing a
smartphone with the Tizen platform in India by the
end of 2014. At the moment, Tizen has only been used
in several wearable devices, such as a camera and
smartwatch. The Tizen-powered Samsung Z , which
Samsung launched in Russia this summer, has yet to
go on sale, after several delays.
The Samsung Z was officially announced in June
2014, as the first phone to run Tizen
Mobile sales make up 97 percent of sales in Samsung’s
IT & Mobile Communications division, and sales in the
division were down 21 percent year-over-year and
down 12 percent from the first quarter.
“It sounds like (Samsung) doesn’t plan on
going big with Tizen on its smartphones,”
said Song Myung-sup, an analyst with HI
Investment & Securities in Seoul. “The
move will likely help resolve convergence
issues that arise when connecting network
devices like TVs and wearables with
smartphones, but this shows less
determination on Tizen smartphones,”
Song said. - Wall Street Journal
A move such as this may be a signal that Samsung
is easing up their desire to heavily compete with
Android. But it should be noted that Samsung had
roughly 40,506 software engineers last year. Therefore,
500 software engineers may not seem like much of a
loss. However, Samsung doesn’t reveal how their
software engineer numbers are spread across different
divisions so we are just not sure how much of a
specific loss this is for the mobile division.
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SOURCE:
Wall Street Journal