What They Say
Samsung told Protocol that
“Tizen still is the default platform for our smart TVs going forward”
after the company decided to merge its OS with Google’s Android platform for wearables. (Android and Tizen Merge for Wearables)
What We Think
Initially, I was just going to put this piece of ‘non-news’ into our regular ‘Links’ round-up, but I decided that it was worth commenting. In the wearables market, Apple is clearly the winning brand with its own ecosystem. To keep attracting developers, it is in the interest of both Google and Samsung to make the platform for wearables as attractive as possible for developers.
That’s not the case in TV. Samsung is the biggest brand, with plenty of support and developers have to support the Tizen platform, or be excluded from a lot of sets. Further, it seems that the growth in streaming services has made the ‘smarts’ in new TVs more important than in the past in the purchasing decision. Strategy Analytics forecast that the Tizen SmartTV platform will have 183 million devices in its installed base by the end of this year. (Strategy Analytics: Samsung’s Tizen Smart TV Streaming Platform Scaled New Heights in 2020). You wouldn’t give that up lightly!
Further, Samsung has good support for Tizen in its professional sets which must be helped by the technology and market share of its TVs with the platform. Abandoning Tizen in that area would be crazy for its B2B display business. (BR)
