NTT DoCoMo & Samsung Developing Smartphone With New Tizen OS

Tizen Mobile OS

According to a report from Yomiuri Online, NTT DOCOMO – Japan’s premier provider of leading-edge mobile voice, data and multimedia services, is working with Samsung to develop a new mobile operating system – Tizen.

The two companies are likely to release Taizen, in 2013, with NTT DoCoMo releasing the device in Japan. The phone may also be released at around the same time in other countries, according to the report.

ComputerworldUK reported that Tizen has been in development since the start of 2012, backed by two major hardware technology companies – Intel and Samsung – hoping to gain a foothold in the software side of the mobile computing device market.

According to the article:

Tizen is a free and open source OS primarily for smartphones and tablets, but is being designed for use on other mobile devices including GPS navigators, in-car entertainment systems, and netbooks. It will also be for smart TVs. So the companies behind Tizen aim to go after many of the same device markets that Google has been selling their Android OS to. An alpha of the Tizen OS source code was released on January 5, 2012, and Version 1.0 came out on April 30.

Tizen has a convoluted pedigree: It’s the successor of three abandoned mobile OS projects – most of them never even reached a final release stage. Overall, Tizen is a combination of Moblin, which was originally created by Intel, and Maemo, created by Nokia. It also re-uses technology from MeeGo, such as its network management. MeeGo, cancelled in September 2011, was originally started by Intel and Nokia.

Sources: Yomiuri Online, ComputerworldUK