Samsung to Focus on Android with Future Handsets

South Korean mobile phone maker Samsung, the second largest handset vendor around the world, is reportedly getting ready to deliver to the market an increased number of devices powered by Google's Android operating system. In addition, the company is also said to plan leaving aside the development of Symbian-based handsets, and to plan launching a much smaller number of phones that run under Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform.

According to a recent article on telecomskorea, the South Korean maker will release a number of 40 handsets during the next year, 50 percent of which will be running under Windows Mobile. Compared to the last year, when 90 percent of Samsung's smartphones were based on Microsoft's platform, the drop is a significant one. By 2012, Samsung is expected to reduce the number of Windows Mobile-powered smartphones it delivers to the market to 20 percent.

Moreover, it seems that the handset vendor also plans on increasing the number of its Android-based smartphones to 30 percent of the entire 2010 production, which means that more than ten handsets will run under Android, a recent report from HMC Investment Securities, a Seoul-based brokerage firm, shows. As for Symbian-based mobile phones, Samsung is reportedly planning their exclusion from its offering in 2011.

During 2009, the manufacturer is expected to ship around 9 million smartphones, registering an increase of around 89 percent when compared to the smartphone shipments it registered last year. According to HMC, the company is expected to ship a number of around 21 million smartphones in 2010, marking an increase of 132 percent compared to this year, and placing Samsung on the fourth place on the smartphone makers' worldwide top.

Samsung is also working on its own smartphone OS, besides delivering handsets powered by other platforms, and it seems that it plans on betting a lot on its proprietary software too. However, considering the fact that mobile operating systems become increasingly appealing as developers come up with more apps for them, it remains to be seen how many application builders the vendor manages to attract on its side, at least this is what Greg Noh, an HMC Investment Securities analyst, says.