Just enough to start the day.
Two alternative, Linux-based smart phone operating systems are still in the game, but might be headed towards greener markets. Version 3.0 of the Tizen OS is due out in September and the Sailfish OS has a new, $12 million lifeline.
Tizen is an open source project that’s largely driven by Samsung. It started out as an alternative to Android and a replacement for Bada, Samsung’s previous in-house OS. So far, it hasn’t found much traction in the mobile phone market, despite Samsung’s dominance of that sector. A couple of Samsung smart phones with Tizen installed shipped to India, but so far haven’t done very well.
On the other hand, Samsung is installing Tizen on its Gear smart watch, as well as smart TVs and other consumer electronics products that are less dependent on the good will of independent app developers. The 3.0 upgrade is pitched as “IoT ready”, according to an article in PC World with support for “refrigerators, light bulbs, washing machines, and even vacuum cleaners”. It could evolve into the OS of choice for connected devices, which are more or less self-contained and don’t need third party apps or services.
So long as it has a sugar daddy with deep pockets and a clear business case, the Tizen project will push ahead and its adoption rate will continue to grow, even if it’s just within the Samsung universe.
It’s harder to see where Sailfish is heading, or even why anyone would want to invest in its parent company, Jolla. A plan to make and sell a tablet fizzled out, and its only ray of hope is Turing Robotics’ decision to move from California to Finland and switch to Sailfish, seeking to leverage tougher privacy laws into a high security selling proposition. But given the increasingly heated battle between tech companies and the U.S. government, and Blackberry’s willingness to hand over encryption keys to Canadian authorities, there might be a market opening for Turing and Jolla.