Gadgets Mobiles

Samsung Electronics will unveil its new open mobile platform, Bada, next month.

Samsung seems to be following a trend of OSs that is “open” yet proprieta The name “Bada” is Korean for “ocean.” The name was chosen “to convey the limitless variety of potential applications that can be created using the new platform,” according to the company’s statement.

Market research firm In-Stat believes the name is ironically appropriate as it highlights the almost limitless variety of mobile OSs as Bada joins Symbian, Android, Maemo, LiMo, WebOS, Windows Mobile, RIM, OSX, and Moblin to name a few. “Anything but Symbian” might have been another appropriate name as that seems to be the message coming from the major handset vendors, but “anything but Symbian” does not have the simplicity of the Bada moniker…..

In-Stat believes the stakes are high. Gone are the days when the basis of competition was solely defined by hardware. The software is becoming the key in determining the user experience. Even within the software stack, however, the focus is shifting from the OS to the software and even more importantly, the applications.

In fact, In-Stat said, the new focus on enabling third party applications places very high stakes on these new OSs. If the growing army of professional and amateur software developers develop or port applications to a particular OS, the success of the handset platform and opportunity for the carrier could be high. However, In-Stat said if a particular OS does not garner support from developers, then the result could be disastrous.