Following delays of over a year, Samsung finally shipped its first Tizen-powered handset, the Z1, earlier this month in India. The arrival of Tizen on smartphones – remember it’s been on Samsung’s Gear smartwatches for almost a year now – has been a long time coming, and there’s been plenty of speculation among press and mobile industry watchers that Tizen could emerge as a viable alternative to Android for the Korean electronics giant.
What we’ve found during our initial hands-on time with an Indian Samsung Z1, however, is a phone that’s very much at ease with Google’s ecosystem.
I want one of these – if only to see what Samsung can build if they’re not just shipping Android.
So Samsung have used another OS to lock themselves into the Google ecosystem. Very clever – not.
If they had half a brain the would do a deal with Microsoft to fork Android and run MS services on it.
Yeah, Microsoft’s alternative to Youtube … that would be great.
Samsung is not interested in avoiding Google’s ecosystem. Because they are not interested in creating a video site, a search engine and an email service anytime soon. Even their ChatOn service is being discontinued tomorrow for most of the world.
http://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-will-once-again-send-chaton-s…
What they are interested in is controlling the appearence and non-cloud functionality of the OS that ships with their devices. With Google putting more and more of Android into GMS (even the Home launcher is in GMS, and GMS code cannot be modified), Tizen serves as a good insurance policy. Samsung may be interested in controlling the app market too, and Tizen’s app market is Samsung controlled.
So, to sum up, I don’t see why Sammy should make Microsoft’s services the default option, when most of the world prefers YouTube, Gmail and Google Search and has been conditioned by Android to use them. Creating an app ecosystem from scratch is hard enough for Sammy, not using Google’s services by default would make things even harder.
Edited 2015-01-31 12:29 UTC
Good luck Samsung…. I have no confidence that they can pull this off in any meaningful way. They have shown that their SW sucks rocks…
What would be the point of locking themselves to Bing and something like Soc.l?
They aren’t trying to kill Tizen, they are trying to grow it.
Edited 2015-01-31 20:27 UTC
How about a simple explanation: Samsung put those things inside (Google search, Youtube and such) because that’s what users want to run on their smartphones. You know, make those phones useful and attractive to customers.
The article is kind of silly.
If the phone includes 2 icons to websites and configure the email app with with a gmail account among many options is hardly being part of the Google ecosystem.
This is the tirst time I think Thom really got fooled.
clever way for samsung, unlike Microsoft its going to have a hard time to make apps for OnePlus aka cyanogenmod since they don’t have google ecosystem..too bad for them.. they will have to deal with tizen first then android…
Apologies for the long post…
My feeling is that Tizen exists to position Samsung to better handle data collection of **it’s users** and thus… Advertising Dollars. It’s important to note that this is a fight for ownership of the end user (data) not about creating a great OS (because it’s not a great OS, it’s a limited clone of an existing OS). They can collect data much better with their own OS without running afoul of the terms of a 3rd-party company (Google, in this case).
Samsung is also a bit more aggressive about collecting data, spamming users, publicly making personal data available on their site. Try creating an account and note this for yourself. I know from personal experience as an owner of Samsung devices.
https://www.samsung.com/us/common/privacy.html
Privacy Policy applies regardless of whether you use a computer, mobile phone, tablet, TV, or other device to access our Services.
Information you provide directly to us;
Information we collect about your use of our Services; and
Information we obtain from third-party sources.
We use the information we collect (and may combine it with other information about you) to, among other things:
Provide the Services you request;
Understand the way you use the Services so that we can improve your experience; and
Provide customized content and advertising.
We may share your information with:
Affiliates — the Samsung family of companies.
Business partners — trusted companies that may provide information about products and services you might like.
Service providers — companies that provide services for or on behalf of Samsung.
Law enforcement — when we are required to do so or to protect Samsung and its users.
More anecdotal evidence to support your argument: my Samsung Windows Phone last week received an update for the APN component (the network stack)
That update required an insane amount of permissions yet does not come with any information.
The Windows store informs me that it requires: Appointments, phone identity, owner identity, video and still capture, location services, music library, photos library, microphone,data services,phone dialer, push notification service, movement and directional sensor, web browser component.
No info whatsoever what had changed came with it nor could I find any release notes. I declined.
Edited 2015-01-31 20:06 UTC
Tizen is a great platform for Google of course: it’s essentially a HTML5 platform, Google is essentially a HTML5 company.
Tizen is a level playing field, nothing more.
Edited 2015-01-31 17:02 UTC
Tizen will help Samsung avoid paying approximately $3.80, per Android device, to Microsoft. This will save them billions of dollars annually. Google likely is working with Samsung to make their ecosystem Tizen friendly. After all, they hate the fact that Microsoft has raked in billions of dollars off of Android’s supposed violations of Microsoft patents, even though the phone makers have to pay the fee and not Google.
It all boils down to maximizing profit.
Are you sure? Past licensing agreements between manufacturers and Microsoft included ChromeOS too which I imagine has not more in common with Android than with Tizen.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/lg-signs-android-chrome-os-patent-deal…