Samsung Mobile has high hopes on its propriety smartphone operating system, Bada. 10 months after its original release, the company is now prepping an upgraded version of the OS called Bada 2.0 around July this year to be first experienced in India.
Bada 2.0 will bring a variety of features and improvements, including Near Field Communication (NFC) support, a smarter home screen, and 3rd party Social Network integration. It will offer SDK support for both Linux and Mac, which makes it more convenient for developers to develop applications for it.
Dipesh Shah, R&D head of Samsung Mobile has seen good traction for Bada devices in India. He said in a statement:
“We currently have a market share of 10-15% in the smartphone segment in India, and with Bada, we are targeting about a share of 30% in this segment this calendar year. Bada, meaning ocean in Korean, is a driving force in accomplishing Samsung’s vision of a smartphone for everyone.”
Samsung has a R&D center at Bangalore, its biggest outside Korea, that has close to around 2,000 engineers working on the OS and developing applications for it. As Shah points out, “about 30% of Bada applications are developed out of this R&D centre in India.”
Samsung Mobile, which has five models running on its proprietary OS priced as low as R8,800 ($200) to R20,900 ($475), reportedly sells as many Bada devices as Android. It is said that Samsung is also the top Android manufacturer in India, which explains why the company has so much confidence in the country.
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