Tizen's alpha release seeks place in crowded OS space

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Tizen's alpha release seeks place in crowded OS space

Open source platform, which combines MeeGo and LiMO, could appear on Samsung devices soon, with bada-like UI

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 11 January, 2012

READ MORE: Samsung | OS | Linux

The latest player in the mobile operating system wars, Tizen, has released its first software release and may turn up on smartphones from Samsung this year. Tizen was formed from the convergence of two Linux-based open source platforms, the carrier-oriented LiMO and Intel's MeeGo, the relic of its former alliance with Nokia. Intel and Samsung are the lead firms spearheading the combined Tizen effort, with an industry association formed on January 1 to promote the platform.

The market for mobile OSs is probably too crowded for Tizen to make a major impact, though it may find niches in carrier branded software platforms, or in non-phone segments such as in-car systems, where MeeGo has a good foothold. Its support for cross-platform HTML5 and web services will also help it take a role in a cloud-oriented world, and Myriad has also targeted MeeGo with Alien Dalvik, its portable implementation of the Android virtual machine.

Its most likely mainstream device supporter is Samsung itself, which was the main source of LiMO products and is never averse to backing any OS which may get it a few more points of market share. Early views of the Tizen user interface bore a striking resemblance to the screens of Samsung's main homegrown platform, bada. Some sources say the Korean giant will launch a Tizen handset later this year, even as early as February's Mobile World Congress

Other board members of the Tizen Association include NEC Casio, NTT DoCoMo and Panasonic - reflecting the heavy Japanese slant of the LiMO effort - plus its main operator backers, SKT, Telefonica and Vodafone. Vodafone initially put heavy weight behind an own-branded user experience, 360, based on LiMO, but later extended it to Android and then pulled back from the effort altogether in favor of vanilla mainstream platforms. That process indicates the biggest problem for niche, open source systems like Tizen and webOS - they are not the top priority for any powerful player, and though carriers would ideally like a counterweight to Android and iOS, they are always forced to support what their consumers want.

The alpha release of the Tizen sourcecode is now available through the Tizen.org project page. As well as the OS, it promises an HTML5 application framework and customizable user experience. The first version targets handsets and tablets, though in future it will also go after smart TVs, in-car devices and other categories. "We will have full sourcecode for smartphones, tablets and additional device targets with a reference user experience available in the coming weeks and months," said the project website, though it cautions developers that the current release is a very early preview and not yet ready to create commercial applications.

The project has also released its alpha SDK (software development kit). The revision of the API is still in progress, but Tizen is releasing it to offer application developers early access. The Qt toolkit used in MeeGo has been superseded by the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) which Samsung used for Bada.