Samsung says no final decision on bada/Tizen merge

According to reports, Samsung has been contacting sites such as AllThingsD to say that a "final decision" regarding a merger of its proprietary bada mobile operating system and the Meego/Samsung Linux Project blend Tizen, has not yet been made. During CES, a Samsung Senior VP had told Forbes magazine that the merger of the two platforms was going ahead and would allow bada applications to run on Tizen devices.

Reporting of Samsung Senior VP Tae-Jin Kang's comments on the bada/Tizen merger had led some to conclude that the bada operating system was being discontinued. This was despite Kang being reported by Forbes as saying that the company was looking at bada for low-power devices and the bada/Tizen merge for higher-powered devices.

Samsung now says, regarding the merger, that it is "carefully looking at it as an option to make the platforms serve better for customers". It also says that bada is an essential part of Samsung's "multi-platform portfolio" and plays an important role. The company will "support open source based development and continue to work together with other industry stakeholders". Last September, Samsung was reported to have been considering open sourcing bada, but, to date, no change has been made to the licensing of the middleware for mobile devices.

(djwm)