Samsung Electronic said it organised a Tizen App Development workshop in the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, indicating that the company is still keen on pushing on with its Tizen operating system.
It also said that a local technical education centre, Sri Shakthi Institute of Engineering and Technology, is establishing a Samsung Tizen laboratory in the institution which will continuously produce trained mobile developers in Tizen.
Tizen OS was introduced about six months ago via the Z1 phone, priced at Rs 5,700 (currently Rs 5,200). However, the launch turned out to be far less spectacular than Samsung had expected.
The Z1 suffered from the problem that most of Samsung’s phones have been affected with – prices disproportionate to what’s on offer.
4 GB of internal memory and 768 MB of RAM may be enough to run the Tizen OS smoothly, but Indians are used to getting 2 GB of RAM and 8 to 16 GB of storage for that kind of price.
Not surprisingly, the phone’s not exactly set the charts on fire.
As a result, it was expected that Samsung too would let Tizen die a natural death, and stop talking about the platform. Mozilla, for example, has not tried to revive the its OS, which too faced a cold reception from Indian consumers after it was launched just before Tizen hit the market.
However, a Reuters report from Seoul yesterday indicated that Samsung is not willing to leave Tizen out to die. According to the Reuters report, the company sold 1 mln Z1s in India already.
More evidence of Samsung’s determination came today in the form of a press release announcing the workshop on Tizen in Coimbatore.
The workshop was held at Sri Shakthi Institute of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore recently, said the company.
“The program equips participants with the knowledge to develop mobile applications and realize full potential of this bourgeoning platform. The event witnessed a presence of 100+ developers during session held in Coimbatore,” it said.
“Tizen OS is an open and adaptable platform offering application capability across mobiles, wearables, televisions, PCs and other segments. It is a flexible operating system built from ground up to address the needs of the mobile and connected device ecosystems.
“The OS enables more efficient use of processing power and resources, thereby realizing faster device speeds and greater energy efficiency, as well as a more intuitive and simpler user experience. This allows developers to respond more quickly and flexibly to rapidly changing consumer needs and makes Tizen optimal for connecting with smart appliances,” Samsung added.
Dr. Aloknath De, CTO, Samsung R&D Bangalore, said, “Samsung is committed to prioritize open platforms, strengthen software competency and engineering resources to enrich Tizen ecosystem in India. The platform allows developers to offer customized solutions to match consumer requirements. Tizen is an optimal OS to connect a wide spectrum of devices and make a meaningful impact on the lives of the consumers. At Samsung, we will continue to work with partners and developers to deliver an augmented application system to our customers.”
In the Tizen DevLab initiative, technical experts introduced developers to the Tizen SDK and APIs. Instructors helped developers resolve their technical queries about the platform and at the end of the session developers were trained to build apps on their own.
Previously, Tizen DevLab initiative has been organised in Bangalore and Mumbai to impart technical knowledge to around 250 participants.
Samsung’s Tizen OS powers multiple devices including the entry-level smartphone Z1, which was introduced in India earlier this year and has successfully surpassed all expectation.
Apart from the DevLab initiative Samsung is hosting the Tizen Developers Summit 2015 in Ritz Carlton, Bengaluru on 30th & 31st of July 2015.
Organized in different cities across the world, TDS has become a regular event aimed to assist local app and platform developers interested in contributing to the growth of the Tizen ecosystem. The upcoming TDS in Bengaluru will feature keynote addresses, as well as technical content for app developers, platform designers, independent software developers (ISV), OEMs, hardware vendors and software vendors.