News: Samsung to debut bada phone OS in April 2010

Samsung has announced that its smartphone operating system ‘bada’ will launch across Europe in April 2010.

The OS is based around Samsung’s existing ‘TouchWiz’ user interface but promises to integrate social media applications and other functionality from the ground up. Bada will also allow for third party applications through its own application store.

The smartphone application market has boomed in the past year with the growth of the iPhone’s App Store and the arrival of Nokia’s Ovi and Android’s Market to Ireland.

To that extent Samsung will be late on the scene and may struggle to gain traction as a result. The prospect of re-working applications for yet another platform may prove unappealing to developers too, unless there is a significant incentive to do so.

By launching a dedicated smartphone OS Samsung is attempting to become more of a challenge to Apple’s iPhone amongst others. Bada will also compete with Google’s Android, a system Samsung itself uses on some handsets.

Samsung is a founder member of the Open Handset Alliance which created Android and is likely to continue to use the platform alongside bada.