We learned earlier this year that the bloatware problem on Samsung Android devices had gotten so bad that it reportedly greatly annoyed Google, which told Samsung to stop releasing so many gimmicky apps. And now it looks like Samsung has gotten the message because it’s apparently ready to ditch some of its own apps found on Android devices.
In a rather hot debate on Twitter, mainly between iMore’s Rene Ritchie and Samsung’s Marketing Manager for Technical Media on the iMessage issue that may prevent users who switch to Android from receiving certain texts, the Samsung exec ended up telling SamMobile’s Abhijeet Mishra that Samsung Hub, a service not many users appreciate, “is going away,” without revealing more details about it.
Samsung Hub offers Samsung device owners a way to shop for digital content, including music, videos, books and apps and access their content on other Samsung devices. Samsung Hub is a clear competitor to Google Play, another reason for Google to be upset with the biggest and most successful Android device maker.
A recent study has shown that Samsung’s proprietary mobile apps are far from being popular with users, which would be one more good enough reason to ditch it.
However, Samsung has yet to explain how Samsung Hub will go away, and whether other Samsung apps will follow.
Recently, it was revealed that the international Galaxy S3 version would not receive its respective KitKat update, while the U.S. version would get it, with Samsung blaming the whole thing on hardware issues. However, it is believed that Samsung’s TouchWiz bloatware is preventing the update, as other unofficial ways of installing a TouchWiz-free KitKat ROM on the GT-I9300 model have proven successful.
