2015 is here. Happy New Year by the way. The Consumer Electronics Show starts next week in Las Vegas and alongside other “smart” home appliances there will be the usual culprits, smartphones, tablets, televisions, smartwatches and Internet of Things (yes expect to hear more this) devices. On the television front, the stage is set not just at CES but all year long as top manufacturers like Samsung, LG, Sony and others take their battle for the black box that has not moved from the living room since the 60s. Curved UHD TVs and the like are here to stay like all the CES teasers from the big three in the television industry have shown so far. Samusng will take a step further. While LG still rethinks its use of WebOS on its huge smart TV lineup, Samsung is turning to its long time effort, Tizen.
The HU8550, a Samsung Smart UHD TV. Others like it coming out in 2015 will be powered by Tizen.
According to Samsung, Tizen will be the operating system that runs on all of Samsung’s smart televisions leaving the factory floor for various markets this year. One of the key selling points of Tizen on Samsung’s smart TVs is that it will enable them to search for nearby Samsung devices and automatically connect to them so as to ease streaming of content over Wi-Fi or bluetooth hence making Samsung’s vision of a Smart Home a reality.
Tizen as you may be well aware has been around for a while and even though a lot of effort has been made by Samsung to drum up support for the upcoming platform and draw developer interest, there hasn’t been much. Some say it is this and other unresolved issues with the OS and partner reluctance that led to the cancellation of the launch of the first smartphone running Tizen, the Samsung Z. Word has it that Samsung has been working behind the scenes to unveil a budget Tizen device in several markets like India where it is expected to debut at the sub $100 price category and compete with the many budget smartphones of homegrown companies like Micromax and others, Google-backed Android One devices, Motorola’s Moto G and E smartphones and Microsoft’s low end Lumias. Before that happens however, Tizen lives on in Samsung’s digital cameras, smartwatches and now, televisions.
Via CNET
