The Tizen Association has been able to drum up quite a bit of support for their upcoming open source Linux-based mobile operating system. In total, 36 companies have pledged support thus far including eBay, Konami, McAfee, Panasonic and The Weather Channel as announced during the Tizen Developer Summit this week in Korea.
Molded from the remnants of Intel and Nokia's MeeGo project with a dose of Samsung's Bada OS mixed in, the OS eventually looks to compete against Android and iOS in the lucrative mobile sector. As Trevor Cornwell from Appbackr put it, the appeal of Tizen has to do with its more efficient coding and the fact that it allows developers to code in CSS, HTML5 and Javascript.
NTT Docomo representative and Tizen Association board member Ryoichi Sugimura prefers the absence of application or feature mandates in the OS which will allow the carrier to customize smartphones with their own apps that are free of bloatware.
While Tizen is typically thought of as a smartphone and tablet operating system, Cornwell correctly points out that it could be beneficial in other connected devices as well. True enough, the association has also established its usefulness in other areas like netbooks (these still exist?), smart TVs and in-vehicle entertainment systems.
At present, only one device is available now that runs Tizen - the Samsung NX300 camera that hides the operating system behind a custom interface designed to look like previous camera UIs. Earlier this year, Samsung promised we would see multiple Tizen devices by the end of the year but thus far, nothing has materialized.