South Korean vendor Samsung is aiming to forge closer ties with application developers in an effort to boost both its software and device hardware offering. A Light Reading Mobile report cites comments from the company’s chief strategy officer, Omar Khan, at the MobileBeat 2010 event yesterday afternoon. “While the breadth of the applications out there is tremendous, the usage that’s occurring is limited to a very small set of applications,” noted Khan. The Light Reading Mobile report claims that Samsung could work with developers to let them best take advantage of the South Korean firm’s Super AMOLED display (offering supposedly superior gaming graphics) or impressive processing power of its devices. The article suggests that a proprietary app could show off the superiority of Samsung’s devices whilst the developer would end up with a unique product that’s easy to get people to pay for. The article concludes that specific applications Samsung has in mind are Media Hub, an as yet unreleased app to put videos onto the company’s new flagship Galaxy S smartphone, as well as advanced games.

Samsung’s application store – Samsung Apps – was launched in September 2009. The store is currently offered in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Spain, Sweden, Poland, Singapore, Hong Kong and Russia, with more than 80 countries around the world to follow. Around 1,300 apps are currently available, focused on gaming, social networking, e-books and health-related tools. Users of the Samsung Omnia, Omnia HD (I8910HD), Omnia II, OmniaLITE and the Wave mobile devices have the ability to download apps in the store, which is designed to automatically display the relevant application catalogue available for a user’s specific phone model. Samsung has a long way to go until it can compete on an even keel with the likes of Apple’s and Google’s efforts though. Indeed, a recent VisionMobile report found that less than 10 percent of app developers had used Samsung’s bada operating system recently for the creation of apps.