What They Say
Invidis reported that Samsung is opening up the Tizen for Business platform which it has used in its smart public displays and is also providing new remote management tools. The OS is going to be available for licensing by consumer TV companies, it was said at the Samsung Developer Conference this year, but Invidis reports that Samsung is considering whether to follow this move by opening it up to other companies.
What We Think
Hmmm…. this topic is worthy of a Display Daily length piece (at least). I can’t see other TV makers rushing to adopt Tizen, although TV users don’t see an OS, they see a ‘skin’, which could be unique. However, they would be controlled by Samsung’s decisions on support of new apps and technologies (and old ones). I can’t see that being popular, either.
Florian Rotberg, in his comments, talks about ‘silos’ and Samsung, historically, has run the different parts of its business as separate developments. It was good at getting things done quickly, more top-down and ‘bali, bali’ than the Japanese consensus model of progress. Developing shared platforms is a different business and needs a slower and more shared approach. Somebody I know that worked for a firm that was very good at working with partners and integrators said to me once “It’s like working for a government department”.
In digging around on this story, I found this interesting comparison of Tizen with Android TV and LG’s WebOS (also available for licensing). (BR)
