Samsung invests $500K in Linux Foundation to battle iOS [u] - Page 2

 

Google's only motivation for dumping Android onto the market is ad revenue.  That's it.

 

Samsung's knows this.  They also know that they are too big to simply be another one of Google's many generic iPhone clone-making partners.  Especially since Google can and will make Motorola their hardware darling.  One $12.5 billion hardware beehatch to rule them all.  No doubt Samsung has made requests to Google for Android enhancements.  And no doubt Google has refused, telling Samsung and the Fandroids of the world "Just wait until the next release.  You're gonna love it.  Trust us.  (Suckerrrrrrs.)"

 

So Samsung could fork their own proprietary version of Android to have more control over their own destiny.  And while they're at it, they could cut out Google's spam machine and whatever user data snooping code that Google has Trojaned Android with.  But that's a lot of work.  Why not start with a clean slate?

 

Enter Tizen.  Samsung can, appropriately, be a big fish in a small but growing pond.  They can be the Big Man on Campus in the Linux Foundation with their half-mil-a-year membership fee.  They can call some or all of the shots, and optimize Tizen for their specific proprietary hardware.  Embrace and extend the crap out of Tizen's open standards-based code.  The better to open up a bigger advantage over all those other struggling Android hardware partners who are still stuck with whatever Google gives them.  Whenever they want to give it to them.  Even if it makes no sense (e.g. releasing Jellybean 5.0 when Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 has barely more than 7% of the Android installed base.  Disastrous.  "Here ya go, suckerrrrs.  Run this on your iPhone clones.")

 

That's probably the paradisical future Samsung envisions.  The harsh reality is that there is no Tizen ecosystem, and almost certainly no forward migration path for users who actually bought Android apps on their current Samsung phones.  They're building it all from scratch.  Five years late to the iPhone party.

 

Oh, and there's one more little detail.  iPad.  An iPad clone doth not live by its OS alone.  It takes a mature, fully-envisioned, battle-hardened, polished user experience.  Good luck with the Tizen experience there, Samsung.  (And have fun fending off Apple in the TV space too.)

How strong in Samsung at software development? Not every company is good at it. Maybe leveraging the open source community, or licensing an OS from MS or Google is their only realistic choice.

I can't hate Samsung for this.

500 dollars??... thats not going to get them very far !! :)

 

i seem to recall that nokia already tried the "lets have multiple versions of the OS" in the last decade and that was a large contirution to their decline. 

 

what makes samsung think they will be able to produce and support an OS and UI? It take a long time and alot of effort to get this right. There is alot more to OS than just compiling the source.

Its the UI, updates, eco system, HOW new features are implemented etc etc. We have all seem companies rush in new features that are not used, only to have someone else be patient and do essentially the same thing with a much better thought out UI and function and have it adopted. Think comversations in SMS. Cant see Sammy being able to do it all. 

Linux and Android have a common base and are making steps towards re-integration. Linux kernel was 3.3 released with merged Android code (http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/19/linux-kernel-3-3-merged-android-code/); Ubuntu is developing an Android-centric version (http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android).

 

Sorry for the interruption. Carry on explaining to each other the difference between thousands, millions, and billions.

We are getting past the point where the OS by itself is of much significance. While Apple has a slight advantage because its iOS is tightly tied to its hardware, this advantage is eroding over time, because competitors can overcome this by spec bloat. Use slightly faster processors, and more RAM and this advantage is mostly wiped out. Most of the fancy Android phones today have very slick interfaces, with very responsive UI. Over the next couple of years, we will see this playing out even further, where all the top OS brands would pretty much converge in terms of features.

 

The game today is about other things - primarily, but not only, ecosystem. Customers will soon have a situation where they are locked into one ecosystem because of investments made on Apps, Movies, Music, Books, etc. This is the game that Apple quietly played, when everyone else was busy trying to come up with the next iPod killer. Apple over 10 years gradually increased its device line-up, even cannibalizing its own devices in the process - but every step of the way, they have assiduously protected and enhanced their iTunes ecosystem.

 

Google and Amazon are the only players that have made any effort in the ecosystem game - and for different reasons, both of their efforts have been largely unsuccessful. To be effective, an ecosystem must be self sustaining. A loss making ecosystem is obviously not self sustaining. An ad supported ecosystem might have a lot of momentum early, but this is the sort of thing that would quickly lose steam as customers start getting repelled. Apple is the only player that has managed to create a self sustaining ecosystem.

 

And a related point - a lot of people are wondering why we haven't seen MS Office on the iPad already. From the stories, it is obvious that Microsoft has completed the coding work. The reason why MS has not yet released Office for the iPad, is because Office is Microsoft's biggest ecosystem play, especially in enterprise. Despite being 5 years late to the smartphone party and over 2.5 years late to the tablet party, MS Office can easily give Windows Phone 8 a decent chance out of the gate. If Office is not available on Android tablets, MS can hope that the race will soon be a two horse race - between iOS and Windows Phone 8. But MS has to be extremely careful how it plays this game - by all accounts, this will be an attempt to take advantage of a monopoly in one area to extract unfair advantage in another area - which is exactly what got Microsoft into trouble in the browser wars. I would not be surprised if Google raises the antitrust ante against Office and Windows Phone - and MS can sidestep the charges by launching Office on the iPad, and making some noises about how OS fragmentation and different screen sizes and other issues are making it difficult to launch a decent version of Office for Android!

 

I also strongly believe that Siri is going to be leveraged as an ecosystem play. Most people look at Siri as a UI play - but that is where the puck is today. Tomorrow, Apple will announce major initiatives and partnerships, where Siri will be used to make travel reservations, for shopping, and for other things. This will turn out to be bigger markets than anything in Apple's iTunes ecosystem. While Apple does not really need Siri to enter these markets, Siri will turn out to be Apple's trump card to quietly capture chunks of these markets.  Or in Apple's words - "Where great ideas go on to DO great things" - emphasis on the "do" is mine - and the point is about how you can use Siri (a great idea) to actually do things easier.

Edited by macarena - 6/6/12 at 5:19am

I can install a Java virtual machine on a Linux computer, and the resulting system will not magically become Android - for example, no Android Apps will run.

 

There's quite a bit more subtlety to the relationship between Linux and the various derivative platforms (such as Android and webOS) that have grown around it.

http://www.slideshare.net/tetsu.koba/android-is-not-just-java-on-linux

 

Note that it's a slideshow from last year tho, so prior to the most recent Linux updates that brought it to closer harmony with Android.

 

Samsung can build the ecosystem but moving to a platform that makes developers pull their hair out won't help their cause.  Amazon did it.  Baidu is doing it.  Korea has sufficient internet and media savvy for Samsung to partner and have an ecosystem to replace Googles within Korea to start and then asia and then globally.

 

They can even do it with Android.  Given the rapid increase in ARM performance the performance delta between iOS and Android will lessen.

 

It should be fairly obvious I was referring to XNU and not HURD.  Spending $500K on forking XNU + BSD by hiring PureDarwin developers strikes me as a better path even if you have to release any kernel changes to XNU under ASPL.  You can still keep proprietary bits and any changes to the BSD part of Darwin.  Or even just dumping $500K into PureDarwin or FreeBSD strikes me as better.  Of course, Samsung can afford to do both or all three several times over.

 

Maybe there's a young Avie somewhere they could hire as well.  Did you work with/for him?

 

Hell, if you're going to copy then REALLY copy.

"With its overwhelming market share, the South Korean company could be looking to leverage itsmomentum and take Apple head-on with a more appealing alternative to iOS."

 

While everyone yacks about the 500... whatever dollars... Did no one notice the writer was still stuck on MARKET SHARE...??????

 

Nokia had market share and where is it now?   RIM had market share and where is it now..????

 

Its selling bunches of great phones,  a " fully satisfied" customer, and tons of profits to spend on the next insanely great product. 

 

Just a thought here. 

 

EN

So exactly what level of influence over Linux has Samsung's money bought them (and how much *more* will Samsung invest)?  Probably a lot. 

 

What does that mean for "free and open" Linux?

 

By the way, Linux and "User Experience" don't mix. Unless Samsung takes full control of what they're investing in, nothing much will change. Linux lacks unity, central control and focus. This is exactly what Linux needs. But these are also the things that are, at least philosophically, antithetical to Linux.

 

Agreed.

 

However, it's a sad thing that Samsung, having used Linux so long to make so much money, only seems to get on the foundation's board to annoy Apple, instead of helping Linux get stronger, which would in the end benefit everyone, while helping them achieve better products. It's kind of an argument in favor of preventing big businesses of having any say in standardization, and having it done by some huge, black-suited-men-with-glasses, government entity. Not that it would work better :p

Wrong. Linux needs to be exactly what it is. Linux would need "unity, central control and focus" in order to be wildly successful in the large public market, but that's not the point of Linux, which is to be an open system for tinkerers, which helps science progress. Linux is at its best in research centers, or on servers.

If you look at the Mac (and as the Apple site remarks), open source helped tremendously. Innovations from BSD coders went into linux and back, and into Darwin, etc. It's a matter of information flowing freely to make better software.

 

Worst case scenario, if Samsung were to have "too much" power over "Linux", someone would fork it, call it something else, and that's what everyone would start working with, leaving Samsung with a dying system. That doesn't strike me as likely...

Best case scenario, Samsung's money makes Linux stronger, and it keeps getting better.

 

I'll admit, I haven't updated my Debian or Gentoo systems in months (I know, that's bad), mainly because I'm ever on Mac OS X, but it seems clearly obvious to me that Apple would not be where it is without Linux and BSD... Konqueror anyone?

 

All of this stuff they had code for already from NeXT or could have built on their own if they had to.  It would have cost more in terms of both time and money but implying they couldn't get here without Linux or BSD is overstating the case.  Even in the case of webkit.

 

IIRC KHTML was essentially rewritten by Lars over a summer from the kludge it was to the foundation of the KHTML that was eventually forked.  So call it around 3-4 staff years of work over the course of a few (like 2-3) years to get KHTML to the point where Don Melton forked it in 2002. 

I think it's great that large corporations are putting money into alternative OS's for mobile devices even if it's from Samsung. The more OS's the merrier as far as I'm concerned. The one I'm looking froward to the most is from Ubuntu, I would love to just plug my mobile into a cradle and have a full working desktop, also be able to plug it into a tablet shell, then into keyboard dock to make it into a laptop. That's is my dream device and why I bought a Padfone from Asus but I would like to have a full Linux deskop or Chrome OS and not just Android.