Samsung playing huge gamble on bada

Samsung Mobile India is gambling big on its system relish smartphone operating (OS), Bada. This is almost 10 months since the company introduced Bada and she came with an upgraded version of its OS 2.0 called Bada around July this year, which will enhance its features like having an interactive user interface and ease more developers to develop applications for it. "We currently have a market share of 10-15% in the smartphone segment in India, and Bada, we are targeting a 30% share in this segment of this calendar year," said Dipesh Shah, R & D head Samsung Mobile. "Bada, meaning ocean in Korean, is a driving force in realizing the vision of a Samsung smartphone for everyone," said Shah.

So far, Samsung Mobile has about five models in Bada, which range between Rs. 8,500 to Rs. 18.499 . Symbian OS is the most widely used in India  with a market share of about 37%, followed by Android with a piece of 22%. According to Gartner, smartphone sales to end users increased by 72.1% from 2009 and accounted for 19% of total sales of mobile communication equipment in 2010 which stood at 1.6 billion. Samsung Mobile sold close to a million devices Bada in the third quarter of 2010, and 6.6 million Android phones, making Android Samsung top seller.

In India, the company sells the same number of devices Bada as it does for Android and denied sharing any numbers on it. "We've seen a good attraction for Bada equipment in India. I see the beginning of this OS as a powerful opportunity for developers in India," said Shah. 

R & D Center in Bangalore, which is the largest outside Korea, has close to about 2,000 engineers working on this platform and developing applications for it. Samsung Mobile has 14 R & D centers in total. "About 30% of Bada requirements were developed by this R & D center in India. It is the only smartphone OS that works on a single processor. In the future we will have more devices in Bada," he added.

Explaining how Bada is different from other OS, Shah said that this OS provides a feature rich, 'open' platform which provides an easy interface, simple and intuitive user without compromising efficiency, it is developer-friendly that enables developers to implement various services without extra effort. "Also, the flexibility of the platform Bada makes applicable to a wide range of devices than any other mobile operating system," he added. Lets see how far Samsung can go wuith this gamble ?