Last week Samsung reaffirmed its smartphone OS strategy for the mass market, with Android making up the bulk of its volumes and its own bada platform targeting the mid-range. But it still isn’t immediately obvious why the company is spending so much time and devoting so many resources to pushing bada as a smartphone platform when Android seems to do the job just as well.

When considering the benefits of promoting bada as its platform of choice for entry-level smartphones, it is worth looking at the costs involved for Samsung. As an evolution of its previous, proprietary platforms, much of the cost will have already been amortised across millions of devices. The company also already has the experience and skills in-house to develop new products swiftly, enabling it to rapidly create a large installed base of bada users.

But much of the same can already be said about Android. The platform is free to licence, and Samsung has already worked on creating a number of devices powered by the OS which fit neatly with the Samsung brand identity. As with bada, it has the experience and skills in-house to cost-effectively develop Android terminals, and could easily capitalise on the success of its Galaxy S smartphone by offering lower-tier siblings.

Samsung has invested heavily in promoting bada to the developer community; its roadshow included more than 30 dates across 25 countries, it has launched a US$3 million global developer competition, and it is also running eight local contests for app developers in markets including China and Russia. All to generate less interest than is already evident for Android, where developers can address an installed base of millions of users across a range of devices from multiple manufacturers.

Looking at it in these terms, it is difficult to see where bada has the upper hand over Android, when Android could easily have been used to address the low-cost smartphone segment (as Huawei and ZTE have demonstrated). Samsung could have continued with its proprietary platform for its feature phone devices while pushing Android down further into the portfolio, without the need to spend heavily on positioning bada as an alternative “smartphone” platform for a developer community which is already not short of choice when it comes to mobile OSs.

Of course, bada will have some benefits for Samsung. Not least of which, it will enable a large number of Samsung devices which would previously have fallen into the feature phone category to be re-classified as smartphones, bolstering the vendor’s position in this competitive market. Allied to strong growth in Android devices, with the company also having a finger in the Windows Phone 7 pie should this platform turn out to be a star performer, this will certainly give it a boost when compared to nearest rivals (in overall handset terms) Nokia and LG Electronics.

bada may also prove useful in market segmentation terms, by enabling Samsung to position Windows Phone 7 as its premium smartphone platform, Android beneath this, and bada for the mass market – if three tiers of smartphones are really necessary.  This will enable it to maintain the average selling prices of its Android line and provide some additional cachet to these devices, which may be enough to convince customers to “upgrade” to the OS when considering a bada purchase – aided by the wider app catalogue which can be delivered by the Android developer base.

Perhaps most significantly, if Samsung is able to generate significant consumer interest in bada – and as the world’s second-largest handset vendor, it is certainly in a strong position – and developer support follows, the company will have created something extremely valuable: its own, fully controlled smartphone platform and developer community. This would enable it to deliver the same fully integrated experience offered by Apple with its iPhone, as well as allowing it to differentiate itself from the rest of the Android community. In these terms, perhaps bada looks like a sensible “plan b”, especially should the current momentum around Android tail off. Remember, Symbian OS was once the darling of the market, while Palm OS had a thriving developer community.

 

Steve Costello

 
The editorial views expressed in this article are solely those of the author(s) and will not necessarily reflect the views of the GSMA, its Members or Associate Members