Samsung has another Tizen-powered smartphone on the way

Tizen hasn’t exactly risen to challenge Android’s dominance in the mobile market. In fact, it hasn’t really done anything at all, aside from powering a few lackluster smartphones and a handful of smart televisions, but Samsung hasn’t given up on its homemade operating system. The company has announced that there’s another Tizen-powered smartphone coming, and as with its predecessors, it’ll be exclusive to India, because rather than trying to steal market share away from Google in markets like Europe or North America, Samsung has decided to focus on expanding Tizen in developing countries. 

Samsung Electronics Co. isn’t giving up on carving out an alternative to Google’s Android operating system. On Wednesday, the South Korean technology giant introduced a new midrange smartphone in India that runs on its homegrown Tizen platform. The new phone, called the Samsung Z3, is the company’s second Tizen-powered smartphone, following the January release in India of the low-end Samsung Z1, which Samsung said Wednesday had sold more than one million units. Samsung, the world’s largest vendor of smartphones, relies on Android to power almost all of its smartphones. But it has long harbored hopes of building its own alternative operating system, which would give it more control over the software and services that consumers use on their devices. However, it has struggled to convince third-party developers to rebuild their applications for Tizen smartphones, given the nascent operating system’s still-negligible market share. In recent months, Samsung has continued to plow ahead with Tizen anyway, embedding it in more the company’s products.