Samsung Bada vs Android

Samsung has come up with its latest smartphone OS platform 'the Bada' recently. The company introduced its first Bada-powered device at Mobile World Congress in February, the Samsung Wave S8500.

While the Bada is still at the nascent stage and there are not too many devices in the offing running on this platform, but still everyone wants to know more about this new mobile operating system. The bada-powered Samsung Wave is a superb device equipped with an impressive 3.3-inch touchscreen. Although, there's no dearth of smartphone OS options currently available - with Symbian, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry OS and  iOS competing against each other - we check the Bada agaist the Google Android OS to see how it fares in this competitive mobile OS market.

Android is the flavour of the year for high-end smartphons. Already, there are over 50 new upcoming devices slated to be released in the market sporting the open source Google operating system. At the same time, there's curiosity in the mobile world about the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series OS.

Another OS ruling the market is the popular Symbian platform. The Symbian OS has been upgraded to Symbian^3 recently, and it still hold top position for the smartphone sales chart. The other prominent OS being the Apple's iOS, which comes preloaded on iPhone touchscreen devices. RIM's BlackBerry platform and Palm WebOS also compete for their market share with a range of new business smartphones under their portfolio.

Room for Bada?
So let's see if there is enough room for the bada OS in the competitive  smartphone market? And what all Samsung has to offer to gain the application development momentum to make it's new bada OS work as a sustainable smartphone OS?

We can get idea about the bada by just taking a close look at the first device Samsung Wave that comes equipped with this platform. The Samsung Wave S8500 comes with decent specs that offer a superb 3.3 inch WVGA AMOLED touchscreen, a 1GHz processor, Wi-Fi, A-GPS, a tasty TouchWiz 3.0 based user interface and Social Hub social networking apps. And all in an elegant design that poses real threat to the slimline high-end smartphones.

Bada vs Android?
Yet Bada isn't quite pitched as an operating system to pummel it out toe-to-toe with Android. Samsung's open source Bada OS is designed for basic or low end models with the tag line - a 'smartphone for everyone' as per its launch menifesto. The OS is meant to provide smartphone functionality across the lower end of the mobile market.

Although, one may say it's a new smartphone operating system, but Samsung plans to introduce this smartphone functionality into mass market. It will be ported to Samsung TouchWiz touchscreen handsets mostly than compete against other prominent mobile OS available in the market. After all, Samsung has been working over the years to keep all its smartphone operating system options as open as possible.

And it's still doing so.

While, Samsung is introducing Windows Phones device such as the Samsung Omnia 7 and at the same time the company has announced a range of new Android-based devices, including the Samsung Galaxy S.

Developer support
Getting developer support for porting apps to the new Bada platform is instruemental in ensuring a successful and sustainable platform. In a market largely driven by the number games, developer resources are likely to be focused on smartphone platforms with momentum behind them. Ever since the Apple i-Phone came to the market, the apps game started. And the key to that is to introduce your apps to the greatest number of consumers through your app store. Samsung has worked on the similar lines as it provides a vibrant apps marketplace for its Bada devices. And to get the numbers required to make development worthwhile.

If you look at the Apple App store, already there are over 140,000 apps available for the Apple devices. Similarly, the Android Market place offers thousands of apps for the latest Android devices - and each day these app stores are getting populated with the addition of more apps developed by a number of developers. In the case of Android, the range of new high-end smartphones soon to be released should further accelerate this trend. And that's the biggest treat for the end-user who wants loads of apps and services at their sleek and shiny smartphones.

In case of Bada, there are very few Bada-based smartphone devices scheduled for release in the year 2011. So with respect to the volume of pre-production devices not that great, Samsung Apps store may not create similar buzz on its apps front. While this is may not necessarily a deal-breaker for touchscreen buyers at the budget end of the market, it's not a great prospect for a would-be smartphone OS.

Nonetheless, the Korean company must have its plan for this new OS ready. The world's second largest mobile manufacturer is aiming to triple its smartphone sales this year to 18 million handsets. At the same time, the company is vying the small smartphone market share with a range of budget smartphones launch. So Bada is ultimately going to be an integral part of its plans.

In short, the bada-based device is really impressive. It gives an idea of what other smartphone makers should be workin on to spread the real smartphone experience, but whether Bada can impart a visible footprint in the smartphone OS market, well, it remains to be seen.