14 DAY TRIAL // South Korean mobile phone maker Samsung, the second largest handset vendor all around the world, plans on bringing to the market the first smartphone powered by its own operating system, bada, sometime in March or April this year. The company has announced officially the launch of its bada OS in December last year, and it seems that it is set to make the smartphone platform known on the market as soon as possible.
The company has been already rumored to plan launching bada phones during the ongoing year, but few were those who expected the first release to occur in such a short period of time. However, the handset vendor already confirmed its plans for bada, along with an aim to triple the sales of its smartphones during 2010, at least this is what Shin Jong-Kyun, president of Samsung's handset division, said at a press conference, reports koreaherald.
“Currently, Bada does not have a prominent presence in the market. But we plan to launch our first Bada phone in late March or early April globally... we seek to make a big success with Bada,” Shin said. “The portion of Bada devices will rise significantly this year,” he stated, while adding that “this year will be a challenging year for Samsung.”
Some of Samsung's plans for the ongoing year include the launch of new Android-based models, as well as the release of new Windows Mobile and bada-powered handsets. In addition, the company also intends to make its application store available for users in more than 50 countries, but it seems that the main focus will be on the launch of bada phones. One thing that should be noted here is that Samsung says nothing of the Symbian releases, which suggests that it might have indeed removed the OS from its future plans.
“In particular, smartphones, full touch-screen phones and messaging phones will lead the market growth. We will strengthen our leadership in this high-end market,” Shin said, adding that the company aims at achieving “shipment growth of double the market growth this year. We target 260-270 million units sales.” In case it manages to do so, it will increase its shipments by 19 percent from the 227 million units it reported for the last year.