Want the latest gossip on the Samsung Galaxy S3? Go on then, here you go, you hungry lot. Want the latest Samsung Bada news? Yeah… Not so many takers, right? Samsung’s well aware of this, and – if rumour is to be believed – it’s about to act accordingly. Is Bada about to be no more?
Samsung launched Bada in 2010 as something of an experiment. It was a bold mission: keep a strong focus on Android, while secretly building a competitor that could quietly sneak up on both Google’s OS and the iPhone. If it was a success, Samsung could free itself of the difficulties in working with Android.
But the problem was that it didn’t work. Samsung’s Bada handsets found homes with some fans, but the overall numbers were disappointing, as a recent report revealed. As an OS it borrowed too heavily from both its biggest rivals to really have an identity of its own. And that resulted in poor developer interest.
Now it’s floundering in mobile no-man’s land, which is why rumour’s surfaced about its demise. The rumour in question comes from Eldar Murtazin, Mobile-Review.com’s Editor-in-chief with a track record for getting these sorts of things right. Occasionally wrong, but often right.
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His in-depth analysis of Bada’s role within Samsung suggests that the platform will cease being developed for internally by the end of the year, with its full-on death arriving by this time in 2013.
We’ve asked Samsung if this is the case, but have yet to hear back. Either way, Bada probably does need to be wrapped up and treated retrospectively as an experiment. As it is, a lot of the visual elements of Samsung’s TouchWiz UI (which it layers over Android) have come from user interface elements in Bada, meaning its selling points are now fairly redundant.
Still, that’s not going to come as good news to the hardcore Bada evangelists. Are there any in the house? Let us know what you make of this rumour, and whether you think Bada and Samsung’s Wave handsets could still turn things around.
Via Mobile Review
