Throughout the second half of last year Samsung (SSNLF, Financial) has struggled to hold on to its position as the global number one despite launches and re-launches. Even though Samsung still holds the first position in the smartphone and electronics arena yet its market stakes have seen a significant magnitude of erosion due to the stiff competition offered by its arch rival Apple (AAPL, Financial) with their iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus and a whole new range of innovation. Not just Apple but budding tech giants like Xiaomi has also done considerable damage to Samsung’s market cap. But the Samsung management has identified their slips and their tech think tank is now busy offering the world something more than just physical changes. The market buzz is that it has come up with a whole new operating system, the Tizen, not just in its smartphones but also for its televisions, to open the doors of a whole new experience for their consumers. Let us take a dig at Samsung’s latest offering the television powered by the new operating system Tizen.
Tizen TVs
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd declared on Thursday that all its new smart television products launched in 2015 will be powered by the Tizen operating system, marking a fresh effort by the company to increase the usage of the software platform.
Just like smartphones the smart TV walks the extra miles of making a television from a mere audio visual device, commonly referred to as the idiot box, to a more user friendly and useful device. They offer additional software and connectivity functions, such as video streaming and web browsing capabilities. Last year in the World Developer’s Conference Samsung had demonstrated the skills and prowess of their Tizen powered TVs.
“We are focusing our efforts on Tizen right now,” Kim Hyun-suk, Samsung’s president of visual display business, was quoted as saying in a press release. “We hope that other TV makers will also use it and help build an ecosystem that will help the platform grow.”
Even though Tizen has been nurtured for quite some time by the world’s top maker of smartphones and TVs yet its ambit covers only a few smartphones, smart watches and cameras. The addition of the television would be the latest feather in the rather modest sized cap of Tizen. The new operating system has been the path breaking endeavor from the Samsung’s deck towards software innovation in a bid to free its gadgets from using Google’s (GOOG, Financial) android platform and hold on to their exclusivity in the vast tech arena most of which runs on android platform.
But Tizen has so far failed to make its mark in the tech domain, due to Samsung’s delay in launching a smartphone powered by the system. Some analysts are skeptical about the platform’s viability despite Samsung being the market leader as a smartphone maker, especially as Android and Apple iOS tightens their grip in the smartphone sector.
Market Buzz about Tizen
Even though team Samsung is on high spirit with their latest innovation the Tizen but the world of developers who run the show on the different operating systems helping the devices unleash the power of the operating systems are yet to gain confidence on Tizen and according to them they will only take considerable interest in innovating software applications for the system once Tizen powered devices have gained a sizeable user base.
While the launch of Tizen-based TVs will increase the platform’s user base, it is unclear if that alone will be enough to pique developers’ interest since users of smart TVs tend to use fewer apps than they do on smartphones.
But after going through the details of Tizen at our end, we feel that Tizen can really make things work for brand Samsung as it has a whole new range of applications apart from just the smartphone. Tizen will not only power the smartphones from Samsung but also boost Samsung’s smart-home business. Tizen can also run on devices with less computing power such as refrigerators and washing machines, offering a way for users to monitor and control such devices remotely. Though Samsung has declared the unveiling of the Tizen-powered smart TVs, it has not yet set any sales target for them, probably because they want to be cautious about how the consumer world accepts the new offering from the tech giant and then set any number target.
Our take
Samsung has successfully been able to identify their misses which had resulted in their consumer base erosion. However it would be difficult to state that the answer to the misses is Tizen or that the new operating system will plug the gaps and catapult the tech giant back to its glorious numbers overnight. However Tizen looks to be a good move from Samsung to entice its customers back. This also speaks positively about the company’s top brass of not becoming complacent despite being global number one. As of now it would be best to watch how Tizen synchs with the users and if there are any glitches to be attended to. Till then we should leave our positions unchanged in the tech giant.
