
Samsung's Bada OS growing faster than Windows Phone - phreeza
http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/samsungs-bada-os-growing-faster-than-windows-phone-1092179
======
ewood
Microsoft should scrap Windows Phone and buy into a joint venture with Samsung
- Bada Bing!

~~~
nagrom
That sounds like a good idea until the collaboration is acrimoniously torn
apart in a legal battle over patents, trademarks and revenue sharing.

Then, Apple file a brief that proves conclusively that it was their idea
anyway and demands $200 for every new installation of Bada. Microsoft, sensing
the winds of change, retreat into enterprise-only mobile space.

Bereft of their large software partner and unwilling to pay licence fees to
Apple, Samsung sell off their low-tech phone business to Facebook, who buy it
for $1bn for no other reason than the price was decided by an engineer and an
intern over lunch. They then shutter the OS, replacing it by FB OS that was in
development for 6 weeks on phones across the third world.

The Techcrunch headline? Bada: BOOM!

------
lrei
Comparing Bada to WP is apples to oranges. Bada is not a smartphone OS and
many (most?) Bada handsets are sold at a fraction of the price of any WP
handset. Symbian is a better comparison for Bada and it probably still dwarfs
it in terms of market share.

As for App devs, native development for Bada is a massive headache that bears
no comparison to WP, iOS or even android. From SDK bugs to Store bugs. And
even when using web technologies (phonegap or pure web app), their webkit
based browser isn't up to Safari/Chrome standards. Plus the low end devices
have (had?) slow processors which make a lot of the fancier CSS stuff
unusable.

On top of that, how many people will even know and use the bada app store?

Oh and nowhere in that mini-article is it mentioned that Bada will probably-
maybe be replaced by another OS, Tizen.

~~~
rbanffy
> Oh and nowhere in that mini-article is it mentioned that Bada will probably-
> maybe be replaced by another OS, Tizen.

Not much of a problem. Tizen will be able to run the Bada application layer.

~~~
lrei
I didn't know that - I haven't been keeping up with Tizen. But I did read that
tizen would also run android applications.

~~~
Zigurd
I don't think the Bada -> Tizen transition is official yet, but Bada had a
Linux-based road map, and Tizen would work on the kind of hardware to which
feature phones are transitioning.

As for it being an invalid or unfair comparison with Windows Phone, you have
to take into account that the feature phone business is overall in steep
decline. What might be called a "feature phone" in the future is likely to be
indistinguishable from a low end smartphone. The difference will be that the
feature phone's ecosystem is more-captive to the carrier's ecosystem, and that
will support lower initial costs.

~~~
lrei
I believe that eventually feature phones will be replaced by smartphones.

Do you believe that Bada will be a smartphone OS comparable to Android/iOS/WP
in the sense that people looking to buy a smartphone will buy a Bada-based one
instead of one that's WP (or iOS/Android) based? I don't believe that.

If people simply want the phone with the best camera than it wont matter if
it's Bada or Android or WP. But if people expect to run apps/games on it than
it will matter.

Bada's "growth" is simply due to Samsung replacing their previous feature
phone OS with Bada. Even if the overall market is in decline, Bada's share of
it will increase as Samsung adopts it in more of their models.

~~~
Zigurd
I think there will be a class of phones that do almost all of the things a
smartphone like an iOS or Android phone do, but that have an app and content
ecosystem where more of the revenue goes to the carrier.

------
ailon
Samsung is the biggest cellphone maker in the world and they put Bada on a lot
of their phones and 95% of the owners of these phones don't know what Bada is.
This makes total sense numberwise, but doesn't say anything about Bada's
popularity. It's totally like Symbian was the biggest "smartphone" OS just a
couple of years ago, just because Nokia was the biggest cellphone maker. Guess
how many Nokia owners knew the word Symbian back then?

~~~
kayoone
I doubt that the majority of mainstream Android phone owners know what kind of
OS they have either. Maybe more than Symbian/Bada but still...

~~~
ailon
Yeah, my daughter (13) was explaining something to her friend like:

D: there's this thing on Android too F: what's Android?? D: your phone!

Still way more of Android users know that they have an Android phone than
Symbian/Bada. Actually most likely no less than iPhone users knowing the word
iOS (doesn't matter that much in iOS ecosystem though).

------
numo16
Microsoft would probably sell more of them if there were some decent phones on
carriers besides AT&T. Last time I got a new phone, I wanted to go Windows
Phone 7, but I'm sure as hell not switching to AT&T from Verizon for it.

~~~
stephen_g
It might help to some extent, but I think the fact that the iPhone was so
successful while it was AT&T exclusive for so long proves that it's probably
not the main issue.

~~~
rbanffy
> the fact that the iPhone was so successful while it was AT&T exclusive

It also had software that was much more sophisticated and usable than any of
its competitors of the time. WP7 doesn't enjoy this advantage.

------
fmystic
Equally valid headline: "Windows Phone and Android are the only mobile
operating systems with year over year growth"
<http://www.asymco.com/2012/08/15/american-exceptionalism/>

~~~
mtgx
The article clearly states Windows Phone's growth was slower than Bada's, so
how can you say Android and WP are the "only" mobile operating systems with
YoY growth?

Plus, you should never trust Aymco's data. The charts look pretty and as if
"they make sense", but the truth is they are always misleading in some way,
from what I've noticed, much like Net Marketshare's charts on mobile browsers'
"market share", which show iOS at 50% or 60% and Android at 20%, even though
there are now about 400 million devices for both Android and iOS, so about
equal in market share.

~~~
barista
>The article clearly states Windows Phone's growth was slower than Bada's Did
you even see the numbers?

Bada grew from 1.9 -> 2.7 percent in 1 year. Microsoft's total share
(including the old windows mobile grew from 1.6 -> 2.7 percent in the same
time. How's then Bada growing faster?
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/14/gartner-global-mobile-
sales...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/14/gartner-global-mobile-sales..).

------
Metrop0218
No one knows what Bada is, it's just because Samsung is huge.

------
needle0
Wonder whether Bada manages to avoid what Japan's carrier-owned MOAP and KCP
platforms had become- once dominant in its home country, yet never managing to
break outside and rapidly losing out to platforms that did attain global
adoption.

~~~
pjmlp
In Germany Bada phones are quite popular, you see a lot of people with Wave
models.

~~~
objclxt
What's totally bizarre to me is that the Wave 3 is a _really nice_ handset on
the outside. It's made of out metal and glass, rather than the somewhat cheap-
feeling plastic on the Galaxy series. Why some of the hardware choices on the
Wave couldn't come over to Samsung's Android range is beyond me.

~~~
cstejerean
I'm guessing it might be an issue of having to compromise to meet a desired
price point.

------
fribblerz
Yet they scraped it and moved on to Tizen[1]. While it's good that Tizen is
linux based and open source, abandoning a perfectly good os(Bada)just in 2
years might not go well with it's app developers. They(devs) might think twice
before developing for tizen now. Although Samsung seems to be planning to make
bada open, I doubt it will get the same traction now.
[1]<https://www.tizen.org>

~~~
bryanlarsen
Bada apps will be able to run on Samsung's version of Tizen, so Samsung is
dropping Bada in a fashion similar to how Apple dropped OS9.

~~~
azakai
Or for that matter Windows Phone 7 and 8.

------
jetti
Yet, despite the fast growth, I'm still having problems finding a Bada phone
in the States. None of the major carriers seem to sell them. I've been looking
for one for about a year now and it just seems that I would have to buy it
directly from Samsung and not get a discount on my new plan discount. If
Samsung could start entering the US market, I'm sure they would easily pass
Windows Phone in sales.

------
barista
That's just some misinformation. Bada grew from 1.9 -> 2.7 percent in 1 year.
Microsoft's total share (including the old windows mobile grew from 1.6 -> 2.7
percent in the same time. How's then Bada growing faster?
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/14/gartner-global-mobile-
sales...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/14/gartner-global-mobile-sales-
down-2-smartphones-surge-43-apple-stalls-as-fans-hold-out-for-new-iphone/)

~~~
Samuel_Michon
That only works out if you believe that Gartner's ‘research’ is sound and has
an error margin of zero.

I encourage you to read Asymco's post on these kinds of guesstimates:
[http://www.asymco.com/2012/08/13/how-many-smartphones-did-
sa...](http://www.asymco.com/2012/08/13/how-many-smartphones-did-samsung-ship-
in-q2/)

