3rd Mobile OS
The Tizen Alliance held a developers’ conference in Korea to promote the growth of the Tizen ecosystem. Tizen is quickly emerging as a third mobile OS as it becomes compatible with both Android and iOS by means of a new porting technology.
The alliance held Tizen Summit Korea on November 11 at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Seoul. The two-day event was attended by over 900 participants and more than 20 business partners in the alliance exhibited related products to create a huge buzz.
Tizen is an open-source mobile OS in development by Samsung Electronics, Intel, and others. Although it is based on Linux like Android, it supports HTML5 and thus can be mounted on smartphones and tablet PCs to laptops, smart TVs, game consoles, in-vehicle devices, and cameras. In addition, a porting tool has been made available for compatibility with Android and iOS, which will encourage more developers to join the market.
Samsung Electronics Vice President Choi Jong-deok, joint chairman of the Tizen Technical Steering Group (TSG), said, “I am sure that Tizen will be a third mobile OS in the near future with smartphones and TVs based on it scheduled to be released.” He himself came up with the first Tizen-based camera there. Demonstrating a Tizen-based 3D racing game, he continued, “Skeptics who say that Web apps cannot catch up with native apps are wrong, and smooth 3D graphic effects are also available with Web apps.”
KT Managing Director Lee Eung-ho, who delivered a keynote speech on behalf of Korean mobile carriers, added, “Google is now going closed, not to meet the original intention of diversity and openness, and Tizen will be the best alternative to it because it focuses on the philosophy of openness and sharing.”
In the meantime, the first Tizen phone is expected to be released via NTT DoCoMo and Orange in the first quarter of next year. Industry insiders are predicting that Samsung Electronics will unveil its Tizen phone at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2014 or the Mobile World Congress the following month.