Sad news for the two of you who were eagerly waiting for the launch of the first Tizen smartphone, Samsung Z. The Korean company has scrapped those plans and will rather turn its attention to lower end Tizen devices, as well as other non-mobile products like smart watches, smart TV and home appliances.
According to a TizenExperts report, Sammy will now put its resources into bringing the entry-level Tizen phones marked as SM-Z130H and SM-130E to the world’s emerging markets. The idea, as far as I’ve understood, is to provide equally affordable alternatives to the growing number of low-cost smartphones coming from China. It remain to be seen whether such strategy could actually work; for one thing, any Tizen phone is a hard sell due to its under-developed eco-system. In comparison, even the cheapest Android device provides users with hundreds of thousands of apps and games.
That being said, we kinda think that at the end of the day, Samsung will keep its platform for other, non-mobile products, relying on Android and perhaps Windows Phone for its mobile offering.
The Korean company will held two Tizen conferences by the end of this year to spur developer interest. First comes the Tizen Developer Summit Shanghai in October, followed by the Samsung Developers Conference in November (San Francisco), though here we also expect to see other, Android apps on display.