Game on.
A $4 million lolly scramble is underway to jump start the Tizen mobile operating system’s app store. The Tizen Foundation announced a developers’ competition with individual prizes that could go as high as $250,000, and released a new version of the software developer kit for the Linux-based and HTML5-centric OS.
Among other things, Tizen is Samsung’s coming replacement for bada, its in-house smart (or at least modestly bright) phone OS. While bada is a very functional, if lower end, platform, it’s suffered from a lack of developer love. The shelves of its app store are sparsely stocked, a problem this competition is designed head off.
The rules give some clue as to Tizen’s planned market positioning. Game developers can compete for $200,000 (with an extra $50,000 offered for using HTML5). Entries will be judged on “entertainment value, visual design, performance, and controls and input.” Duller productivity apps are only worth a $120,000 top prize, plus the $50,000 HTML5 bonus.
The emphasis on games says that Tizen’s roll out will focus on younger, value conscious users, while the spiffs for HTML5 put it in direct competition with Mozilla’s Firefox OS, which soft-launched this month in Spain.
Housed at the Linux Foundation, the Tizen project is also backed by Intel. Not surprisingly, the SDK supports both ARM and x86 builds and, assuming HTML5 works as intended, apps should run equally well with either chip architecture.
Deadline to enter is technically 1 November 2012, but there’s a catch: to be eligible, an app has to be approved by the Tizen store, a process which could take days or even several weeks. Not quite as easy as diving for treats, but just as much fun.