Citing “a person familiar with the situation,”, The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Samsung has no plans to buy a mobile software platform (it already passed on webOS and MeeGo). It will instead make its Bada mobile operating system an open source platform sometime next year.
Samsung is hoping that the move would translate in increased adoption for the platform, perhaps going as far as extending it onto smart TVs that support features such as on-demand streaming. The could also help Samsung reduce its dependency on Google Android. The move is similar to the one taken by Google with Android which it offers for free to manufacturers but it would not be without risk. Nokia similarly made Symbian an open-source platform but met with little success. According to Neil Mawston, an analyst at Strategy Analytics: “For Samsung to be successful with opening Bada it will need to be launched in the United States market, because that is where the most powerful developers and consumers are found. If Bada does not get traction in the huge U.S. market, then the odds will be stacked against success.”
Samsung launched Bada in 2009 and recently launched version 2.0 with a number of new Wave devices.