Samsung is reportedly gearing up to launch a high-end smartphone running on Tizen OS next year, likely in a bid to stand out from the sea of Android handsets out there.
Details regarding this purported Tizen-powered smartphone are yet to surface, however, and no official confirmation is available at this point.
Nevertheless, an unofficial Samsung website from Vietnam reports (via SamMobile) that Samsung will unleash this high-profile Tizen smartphone sometime in 2016. The company could either expand its existing Z line of Tizen devices, or launch a whole new series catering to the high-end segment of the market.
Samsung has been rumored for a good while to launch a high-end Tizen phone, yet so far this prediction has not materialized. None of the Samsung Z Tizen handsets launched so far come with top-notch specs on board, yet Tizen OS still managed to overtake BlackBerry OS. As Strategy Analytics reported earlier this month, Tizen OS ranked as the fourth largest smartphone operating system in the third quarter of 2015, surpassing BlackBerry for the first time.
Unleashing a high-end Tizen smartphone could further boost the success of the platform and disrupt the highly-competitive smartphone market dominated by Android and iOS.
So far, the Tizen-powered Samsung Z1 and Z3 smartphones didn't exactly fly off store shelves, but they did manage to raise plenty of interest. The Samsung Z1, for instance, had a sluggish start and made a rather poor impression when it first launched in India, but eventually managed to sell one million units within its first six months on the Indian market.
At the same time, Samsung itself announced last month that its Tizen OS grabbed the second-largest market share in the budget smartphone segment in India, trailing only Android.
Leveraging its own operating system would make sense for Samsung, especially since Android already has a wide pool of devices in all categories, offering similar specs within their segments. With Tizen, Samsung would have something to stand out from the crowd and better differentiate its high-end smartphone from the sea of other high-end smartphones on the market. Competition is already fierce and it's only bound to heat up even further, so offering something different could turn out to be the golden ticket.
