Samsung Launches Bada Smartphone Platform
By Gustav SandstromOf DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. (005930.SE), the world's second-largest handset maker by shipments, Tuesday launched its new smartphone platform, named bada, as the focus of the cellphone industry increasingly shifts to software.
Bada, which means ocean in Korean, includes a support platform for software developers, as the company aims to catch up with rival systems that offer an easy to use and feature-packed interface for applications such as games, the Internet, location-based services and music.
Driven by the success of Apple Inc's (AAPL) iPhone and its App Store, phone makers and wireless operators have started to push their service offerings hard.
Samsung's bada includes motion sensing, face detection, social networking and other interactive features, and its launch coincides with a challenge by the company to developers to win a share of a $2.7 million prize fund by using bada's features to build applications.
Development partners for bada include Twitter and games companies EA Mobile, a unit of Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS), and France's Gameloft (GFT.FR).
The platform provides an opportunity for developers "to get their applications onto an unprecedented number of Samsung devices across the world," said Hosoo Lee, Executive Vice President of Samsung Electronics' Media Solution Center.
Samsung will initially launch bada-based touch screen phones for the mid-range segment and thereafter on lower-end devices, Hosoo Lee told Dow Jones Newswires Tuesday.
He said bada phones will mainly be released in Asia and Europe in the first half of 2010, followed by other markets later, but Samsung had yet to determine a more detailed roadmap or set of targets.
The company will gradually expand the number of bada handsets but will also continue to use other platforms such as Microsoft Corp's (MSFT) Windows Mobile, Google Inc's (GOOG) Android and Symbian, said Lee, adding that the company still hasn't decided whether it will open up bada to other mobile phone manufacturers and operators.
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