Breaking into the mobile platform business with a brand-new platform is tough these days — just as Microsoft and BlackBerry, both of which have seen their most recent mobile platforms hurt by a lack of applications. BlackBerry recently caved and issued an update to BlackBerry 10 that made it much easier to install Android apps to BlackBerry 10 phones while Microsoft is reportedly considering doing the same thing with Windows Phone. Technology Review reports that Samsung has already succumbed to the reality that it won’t ever be able to build a comparable app catalog for its upcoming Tizen mobile platform, which is why it’s planning to use technology that will make thousands of Android apps available right from the start.
Open Mobile, a software company based in Framingham, Mass., is supplying Samsung with an application compatibility layer for Tizen that make it compatible with tens of thousands of Android apps when it launches later this month.
“At a minimum we will be providing tens of thousands of apps able to run on the Tizen platform, and we’ve had discussions that go up into the hundreds of thousands,” Howie Hecht, director of product management and content platforms for Open Mobile, tells Technology Review. This will certainly help solve a major problem encountered by Microsoft and BlackBerry, whose platforms have both suffered from a lack of developer interest. Even so, it will take more than just Android apps to make Tizen a hit and Samsung will need to provide a compelling reason for it to exist other than being just another new mobile OS.
