With the announcement of the Gear 2 and Gear Neo smartwatches by Samsung earlier in the day, one thing became clear: that we’ll be seeing Tizen used by Samsung and other OEMs who are members of the Tizen Association as the main platform for wearables. The Tizen Association held a session at the ongoing Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain and confirmed that.
According to the Tizen Association, Tizen will also be key in home entertainment systems with manufacturers like Samsung keen to use it not only on smartphones but on home entertainment devices like televisions. Well, we heard about plans to make Tizen-powered TVs last year when Samsung co-CEO of Consumer Electronics and Home Appliances Boo-Keun Yoon sat down for an interview with German publication Die Welt (The World) on the sidelines of the IFA and this is slowly shaping up to be a key strategy by the company.
Also, in a rather low profile way, the Tizen Association did show off what it has been working on all those years with the first Tizen smartphone being demoed. It’s still more of a prototype than the actual thing that everyone is expecting to come out at some point. We’re not sure when this particular smartphone will ship or which markets it will be available for but anyway we should expect a grand launch of the device once the concerned parties are really sure they want to push ahead with the project on smartphones and not just wearables and home entertainment systems. We’re not really shocked at the wearables announcement since Samsung already ditched Android for Tizen in its latest smartwatches.
Additional info: ExtremeTech
