Exclusive: "Samsung is committed to bada OS"

Wave III recently arrived in India piggybacking on the latest bada 2.0, a proprietary operating system of Samsung. Packing in a slew of exciting features that its predecessor lacked in terms of multi-tasking, Wi-Fi direct, Near Field Communication (NFC), voice recognition, motion user experience among others, bada 2.0 OS catered to the need of its bada lovers.

With Android's latest iteration Ice Cream Sandwich and Apple's iOS 5 commanding  strong presence, Know Your Mobile talks to Ochintya Sharma, Vice President and Team Head, Wireless Products and Solutions Team about bada 2.0 and what makes this OS exciting for both the consumers and developers.

Know Your Mobile: bada 2.0 OS brings in a slew of features. What according to you are its top features?

Ochintya Sharma: There are 2 perspectives that we want to look at –

1) Consumer Perspective –

a). ChatON - This feature provides users a simple way to be in touch with friends and family anywhere in the world. It enables users to communicate in multiple ways, allowing multimedia content and animated messages, as well as more conventional instant messages, to be shared with friends and family.

b). WiFi Direct: This allows high-speed data transfer between two clients over WiFi, without the necessity of a traditional Access Point.

2) Developer Perspective –

a). A smartphone ecosystem is enriched by applications. Developers need new tools to expand their creativity.  In bada 2.0, we have introduced the Web App Framework – which allows Web Application developers to build applications onto the bada ecosystem using HTML, CSS, Javascript. This will extend our ever-growing developer community, to now include the thousands of Web Application Developers.

b). Support for bada Ad Gateway for in-app advertisement. This will enable developers to monetize their apps even more.

Know Your Mobile: Android and iOS have gained significant foothold in India. What strategies to do you have in mind for adding bada in the mix?

Ochintya Sharma: As we have stated, the vision of bada is "Smartphone for Everyone". bada strives to convert Samsung's traditional user base into smartphone consumers and hence realize a new and extended marketplace – the bada blue ocean. We believe that we are winning in that market place – customers are excited with our offering and we will continuously work on leveraging our platform expertise to keep that excitement alive.

Know Your Mobile: Are you looking at introducing any further changes to the bada 2.0 OS?

Ochintya Sharma: Samsung will always look at evolving the platform, just like we moved from bada 1.0 to 2.0. You can expect more enhanced features and rich user experiences as we go forward.

Know Your Mobile: With Android and iOS set to bring out their latest iterations, when do we get to see the bada 2.1 OS?

Ochintya Sharma: Samsung has been always in step with customer needs and we will continue to enhance the platform in a timely manner.