As Sammobile reports: “Samsung will not bring any kind of new Bada phones in the second half of 2012. Samsung’s latest bada phones showed up last year at IFA 2011 in Berlin. Samsung showed the Wave3, Wave M and Wave Y, all those devices run on Bada version 2.0. The focus of Samsung in the second half of 2012 is fully on Windows Phone 8 and Android. Because the Windows Phone market is in the hands of Nokia they will try to get that share back. Samsung will also try to make their Android position better than before. Thanks to some new Galaxy products in the second half of 2012. Another sad thing is Samsung moved their first TIZEN OS devices to 2013. Samsung already gave away some developers devices with TIZEN 1.0. The only problem is the support from TIZEN itself.” Tizen was a lost cause to begin with, and Bada, while actually pretty good, can easily be replaced by Android. As much as it sucks to lose two operating systems (don’t kid yourselves – these are EOL messages), it makes sense from a business perspective. Next up: the TouchWiz team.
I guess Jolla will come up with Linux handset earlier. Plus they are more interesting since they use Mer Core ( http://merproject.org ) which is community driven and openly developed, in contrast to Tizen which is developed completely behind closed doors (i.e. while the source is kind of available, only corporations decide all architectural details and direction).
I liked Meego. Is Mer just Meego with a better governance model? Does anyone know? I’d love to use it in places a lot of people think of using Android.
Yes Mer is a fork of the Meego project (partial since Meego was rather broad) with better governance model (meritocratcy).
You can read about Mer’s story here:
http://lists.meego.com/pipermail/meego-dev/2011-October/484215.html
https://archive.fosdem.org/2012/interview/carsten-munk.html
https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Main_Page
Mer is a core distribution, providing a base for vendors and community distributions to create end user products.
Mer based projects for example are Plasma Active (KDE’s mobile targeted version currently focused on tablets) and Nemo Mobile (handset targeted distribution, inherited from Meego handset).
Jolla is using Mer and components of Nemo to build their handset with their interface on top.
Edited 2012-08-23 02:33 UTC
I’m still a little confused. Nemo is for handsets, built on Mer, and has a UI based on QT. Isn’t Plasma Active also based on QT? And Jolla will build something based on QT and on a handset, but it won’t be Nemo.
Android does all three, so I know how to write an app for that. How exactly do I write a… Mer app? Nemo app? Are they all the same? Do they interoperate at all?
All the docs seem to be aimed at people putting stuff on hardware, or people looking to contribute straight to one of the projects, and there’s stuff for writing QT apps… but what do I do as a potential App writer?
Qt is a base library which doesn’t force you how UI should look and it can be used with various DEs and window managers, mobile and desktop ones.
Plasma Active uses KWin and their user interface to create a mobile optimized UX. Nemo is using Lipstick QML desktop to create the user experience. Jolla didn’t really explain what they’ll use besides Mer core and potentially some parts of Nemo to create their UX.
However, all these derivatives share common architecture – they are all conventional Linux (using either X.org or Wayland unlike Android which is incompatible with above) and common libraries (see http://gitweb.merproject.org/gitweb ).
So if you write a mobile Linux application using those libraries (including Qt for the interface for example) – you’ll be able to build it for any of those distributions. Note that they can be built for various architectures (x86, ARMv7hl, ARMv7l, MIPS and etc.). So if you figure out what device you target – you can build your application for it for example with cross compilation (see
https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Platform_SDK
http://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Platform_SDK_and_SB2
Adjusting your application to various form factors (different tablets, handsets and etc.) is the question of your design and flexibility of that application, it’s not bound to the distribution per se. If you want to fit a certain theme/style that’s already another question.
Mer is not an end user distro. Writing a “Mer app” means creating some library or runtime for example.
GUI mobile application with Qt. You can compile it for Nemo target using the Mer SDK.
Mer derivatives aren’t the same, but they are close enough to make porting between them easy. If architecture matches, one can potentially run some application even without recompilation, but there can be version differences and other specifics. In most cases you can just compile your program for different Mer based targets and that’s it.
You can start with getting familiar with using Mer SDK. There are Hello World examples on the SDK & SB2 page:
https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Platform_SDK_and_SB2
Mer also allows using OBS.
Edited 2012-08-24 08:01 UTC
As a former Nokia employee I wasn’t expecting Tizen to go anywhere.
Sadly, reality seems to confirm my expectations.
Is it just me or should you not have any faith what-so-ever in any linux distribution that has Intel as one of its Corporate sponsors.
First there was Moblin, then Meego, now Tizen. I’d say the same for Nokia, but Mameo shipped on products for a while. But that was old Nokia, before the stealth MS takeover.
That could be the case if that distribution was community managed (like Meego’s fork, Mer for example). But Intel and Nokia weren’t just sponsors, they effectively fully controlled Meego, so naturally when they quit – it stopped as a project.
Intel is, at the moment, the number 1 corporate contributor to the Linux kernel project.
I’m not the least bit surprised either..
The second I heard about Intel abandoning MeeGo, after Nokia already did, and starting again with Samsung with yet another approach, I knew it was a dead end..
Intel may have had a chance if they stuck with Moblin to this day (which, by the way, atleast had a decent name). But restarting time and time again, no that’s not a receipe for success.
So now what are Intel gonna do? Claim they have every intention on continuing Tizen without Samsung, just to drop it a bit later, again?
No one stops Intel from contributing to Mer.
Sure, but will they? I doubt it..
I doubt it too so far. They want more corporate control, however that’s exactly why Meego failed as a project, and Tizen has the same intrinsic risk.
No MeeGo was big success.
Its CEO of Nokia who killed it with no sane reason. You know that N9 smartphone getting better revies than iPhone? Or N95 who won design prize __over__ iPad2?
Problem with Mer is not lack of Intel engagements but lack of OEMs.
Intel wants their CPU/GPU shipped on handsets. Mer could not deliver that, Tizen could. (Though how Jolla will change that is still unknown)
Meego wasn’t a success in the end, since the project halted. Nokia never switched to Meego proper, being stuck in Harmattan and then just switched to Windows altogether.
It’s not a bigger problem for Mer than it was for Meego. How many Meego handsets or tablets came out (not counting N9)? Right – practically none. OEMs aren’t running to write Linux drivers for their devices thanks to Android. As some phrased it – Android is the best friend and the worst enemy:
http://lwn.net/Articles/504865/
So Mer is picking up where the Meego stopped, and is even in better position now than Meego was before.
Edited 2012-08-23 15:31 UTC
Nokia CEO was not succes.
N9 was profitable and got better reviews than iPhone. N95 got DESIGN award over iPad2 in GB. If that is not definition of success than I do not know what success is…
Nokia decision of halting MeeGo had noting to do with performance of MeeGo. In fact Nokia CEO publicly stated that such performance is irrelevant and that even with big success MeeGo will not be continued.
Some analyst calculated that if N9 was backed by sane CEO, and sold in every major Nokia market than Nokia would be on + just from revenues of Nokia handsets unit.
That is definition of cash success.
Only failure of MeeGo is that it happened to be launched under CEO who wanted to gain market share for other company. And you can hardly blame MeeGo for Nokia shareholders decisions.
I’m not talking about Nokia, I’m talking about Meego project which was too dependent on Nokia. That spelled its doom the moment Nokia’s mood changed. Being so dependent on an unreliable supporter can’t be called success. Mer was created to address this problem.
Edited 2012-08-23 21:33 UTC
I do agree. MeeGo like Tizen now was too dependent on single OEM.
But that is how Intel wants it. They want to sell their chips, so they need mobile OS that can run on x86. That is why Nokia was choosed. They had all to win to focus on MeeGo. While Intel would get market for its chips.
Though calling Nokia unreliable at that time is not fair. Nobody thought that Nokia would choose completely new OS ecosystem that would have nothing do to with anything “Nokia”, and would not benefit Nokia ecosystem.
Foreseeing that would require large amount of insanity on behalf of person making prediction.
In other words, organization behind MeeGo had ingrained risk, but very very very small. Our lose that in the end it was too large.
On the other hand N9 and N95 prove that coop between Nokia and Intel was good enough to create wonders. Shame on Nokia CEO for not using it.
Tizen runs on x86 and ARM (Samsung and Huawei); Panasonic and NEC are also members of the TA.
http://www.tizenassociation.org/en/
So Tizen will run on millions of devices, in all shapes and forms.
Edited 2012-08-24 10:07 UTC
This should teach FOSS projects a lesson – don’t trust corporations blindly, and try to be independent enough in order not to halt when they change their moods.
You’re living in fantasy world. Yes, evidently you have no idea what success means – it’s certainly not about some fanboy reviews, or meaningless design award given to an absolutely fugly phone (but, coincidentally, ~made in the UK – where Nokia has/had major design & Symbian operations – the same place where the award you claim is located …likely just a case of pompous hipster buddies). N9 never came close to returning the looong investment in it & its platform.
WebOS, RIM, Bada, all failing and/or losing momentum… if there’s a place for third player, that’s certainly MS with their resources and overall influence on the industry; if Nokia didn’t want to be relegated to being just another Android oem (where they wouldn’t be able to compete with vertically integrated Samsung, like like most present Android OEMs are unable), then MS was the only way.
Edited 2012-08-30 00:05 UTC
Meego was buggy, incomplete, and it took them many years to arrive even at such state (first releases essentially long before iPhone was even revealed, as Series 90 / Hildon / Maemo). Also, it failed to interest 3rd party devs. And you’re quite selective in your choice of reviews – say, check out one from mobile-review.com
If you are really able to call that a big success …you’d make a much less sane CEO than Elop; abandoning such project was a rational decision.
Why not? They have huge resources and unlikely to run out of names.
Yea, but for it to be a success, it kind of has to be actually, you know, properly released sometime and used by, you know, lots of people..
If you just restart all the time with different “visions”, you’ll never get there, and eventually the entire project will just quietly cease to exist.
Maybe it’s just that they’re trying too hard. Maybe they should do the Google/Microsoft thing and just let their employees experiment with things to their heart’s content, not concerned with failure since it doesn’t cost as much.
Cozy up with Google and focus on supporting x86 Android.
Now THERE’S an idea! 😀
Seriously, every company trying to make their own silly little O.S…come on. It’s much better to let the big boys at Google handle their established and already excellent Android O.S. and focus on making it work better on their hardware, instead of fighting a lost war.
After the Microsoft monopoly on the dektop, most companies don’t want to repeat the same mistake with Google on mobile.
The Facebook phone = FB UI + Tizen + HTC phone for instance.
Other brands will follow the same model, almost like in the credit card biz.
Edited 2012-08-23 05:29 UTC
Why not? This is how the computing market used to be before everyone embraced MS-DOS and made Microsoft what it is today.
As much as I like Android, I surely don’t want to have an Android only mobile ecosystem.
If I had to choose between a world with iOS, Android and WinP or only Android I would choose Android only. Because Android is opensource and any company can run away with it. I can’t see how you can get the situation you have now, with desktop pcs where MS has a monopoly ,with Android.
ALREADY DONE.
All Intel care about is x86 manufactured by Intel to be sold.
They hoped that MeeGo could deliver, and it would if not for Nokia insane CEO (who physically blocked its customer base from buying MeeGo products). Other OEM where not so involved, so Intel went out into the world and found new one Samsung. Though Samsung have a bit different needs so Tizen was created.
Well at least there’s Mer, which I can see being more successful than Tizen to begin with. Since Nokia also got rid of Qt to a more able company, I think we’ll see more developers supporting it as well as the power and speed that QML has to offer.
So a Dutch blog says that Samsung moved their first Tizen device to 2013.
I don’t understand why this would mean that Samsung “kills Tizen”.
Tizen = Linux + HTML5 without a browser. Tizen and HTML5 will kill all mobile ecosystems imo.
I found the conclusion drawn to be off too. MeeGo, BB10, Tizen, all the first devices with a brand new OS delayed. The first device gives the overall first impression of the whole platform. Press and people are going to judge the whole strategy based on the first device. So, it is important to make it decend, to improve and make the momentum when the first device hits market huge. Later on updates are more or less sideline news but the first device will be a frontpage news with deep and long reviews. Better delay and polish rather then hurry up and lose in the long run.
For HTML5: That is really not the killer. This days all or at least most platforms support that. Even MeeGo N9 got a WebWidgets app that executes the latest, greatest HTML5 apps. WP8, Android Chrome and Opera all support that out of the box.
There are reasons why there are so less HTML5 apps, why there are no complex larger HTML apps. Its horrible to develop, maintain and use. It will improve without question but native apps are not going away. A recent platform supports more thrn HTML5 only. Tizen was or is(?) at that point more then once. The EFL support was removed but Tizen 1.0 was shipping with Qt. I have hopes they integrate Android API too offering an to Android compatible stack plus Qt like Jolla and BB10 do.
Edited 2012-08-23 05:41 UTC
The Tizen roadmap is very simple:
1) the release of E17
http://e17releasemanager.wordpress.com/
2) the webruntime must be improved:
http://html5test.com/results/mobile.html
HTML5 without a browser is a real paradigm shift imo
It remains to be seen.
Personally, I have already enough of HTML+CSS+JavaScript crap at work, trying to fit desktop concepts into browsers, each with its quirks, and always feeling alien to the desktop around them. Plus not taking any advantage of the available hardware resources. Yuck!
Native applications are the way to go, the web should only be used for communication protocols and documents.
OS app stores will be dead within 5 years imo
WINDOWS PHONE 7 DO NOT BRING PROFITS.
BADA OS BRING SAMSUNG PROFITS.
Now show me any sane CEO who would push for more WinP7 devices….
Also EVERY vendor report DECLINING WinP7 sales, and not without reason. WinP7 is OBSOLETE, as stated by MS, without any means of rescue.
If samsung will push Windows Phone, it will only be Windows Phone **8**
And even if that is true, there is no way in hell Samsung would sacrifice Bada!
Not WinP8 nor Android would work on those feature phones. They have too low specs. And Bada OS have 8% in handsets sold by Samsung.
Also Samsung already have 45% of Android market (1 in 2 Android sold handsets belong to Samsung!!!). So Samsung do not need to do anything more to win Android market, already they are doing fine. So Samsung also do not need to sacrifice Bada to win more Android market!!!
But its not first lie about WinP7 we hear today. Localytics where before giving also gross lies about WinP7 grow and OEM engagement.
BTW Did you know that Bada OS market share is EQUAL to WinP7 market share? So Samsung will lose 3% (profitable and with steady gorw), to gain 3% (not profitable and with decline in coming Q)? Ridiculous.
> But it’s not the first […] Localytics […]
If anyone is interested, he can see more information in
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/08/paging-stats-p…
Read that too
There are also reasons why Smasung pursuing WinP7 is pure lunacy on behalf on Sammobile.
Why on earth are you talking about WP7? (except to troll of course).
The article talks about WP8, not WP7. And WP7 is declining in anticipation of WP8.
Because of two facts:
1) Article state that Samsung wants to win back Nokia dominated market. Nokia own 0% of WinP8 market so article must by talking about WinP7 market.
2) Article state that Samsung wants to win WinP market in H2 of 2012, and WinP8 will be only available in Q4, so socope is too large for just WinP8.
So in fact what I’m saying is that Samsung will ABANDON Windows Phone market till launch of Windows Phone 8, and then they still may be committed only partially. I’m saying that THERE IS NO MARKET TO WIN BACK and there will be no such thing for H2 of 2012.
Also note that I did stated that Samsung may be focusing on WinP8 more than WinP7 but they will not pursue it full untill 2013 at best. That is my message. Samsung and WinP in __any__ version in 2012y? RIDICULOUS.
I guess Balmer and Elop can now celebrate, mission accomplished.
Edited 2012-08-23 09:17 UTC
Some random site on the internet makes some claims, ergo it’s true? I don’t see any links to any credible source on that blog post. None. Nada. For all we know it could be made up.
They will? Says who? Doesn’t sound like an entirely sound business decision to go up against Nokia in the Windows Phone market. Wait, Windows Phone market? Is it a separate market from the mobile phone market?
Why would Samsung care about selling Windows phones, specifically?
I guess in this brave new blogging world speculation rules the day and fact checking is for suckers.
Agreed, this post is complete BS.
I was shocked to read this on OS News btw
Samsung already sell WinP7 devices. Approximately 1 out of every 100 sold Samsung handset is powered by WinP7.
While 8 others are powered by Bada OS…
The official Tizen roadmap proves there’s not even a delay:
http://download.tizen.org/misc/media/conference2012/tuesday/ballroo…
Tizen 2.0 release in December 2012, devices in 2013.
The Sammobile guys have never seen this roadmap imo
I guess there is a chance Tizen will be killed, but I predict it is much less than 50%, so I will predict Tizen will be released in 2013, so let’s see who will be right
Anyway, there is a serious mistake in the story here. At the risk of sounding like a broken record: Tizen is Bada2!! So it is no surprise that they will stop making new Bada devices when Bada2 is just around the corner.
I already suspected Tizen would be delayed, as a WebKit developer, it is easy to tell from the source-code that the EFL-port of WebKit is at least half a year from a releasable state, but both Intel and Samsung have been trying to hire QtẂebKit developers, which indicates they still focus on Tizen.
Finally Samsung has a history of betting on every single horse. Right now they are making money on both Android and Bada, so I see no reason Samsung would turn away from their historic behaviour. They are just phasing out Bada to prepare for Bada2, aka. Tizen.
Edited 2012-08-23 10:36 UTC
yep, but Tizen is not Samsung:
http://www.tizenassociation.org/en/
We’ll have Tizen TVs (Panasonic), phones (Facebook phone, etc.), IVI (vehicles), many OEMs and operators. Time will tell.