You know it makes sense
Just as there's currently a free-for-all going on in the smartphone hardware market, with new entrants NVIDIA and Intel soon to be jostling for position with incumbents like Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Freescale, the software side of things is looking pretty wide open too.
And open is the operative (pun intended) term as Linux based operating systems are very much in vogue right now.
Yesterday, Nokia launched a new smartphone that was the first to sport the Maemo 5 operating system, designed by Nokia, but based on Linux. Soon after, telecomskorea.com reported a confirmation from Samsung's head of mobile devices design - Dong-hoon Chan - as confirming that Samsung is developing its own OS.
You need a subscription to view the full story, but we have unwiredview.com to thank for extracting the following Chang quote from the article: "As have other leading mobile phone makers, Samsung has considered the necessity of developing its own operating system. And now is the right time to realize that advancement."
The Microsoft's Windows OS is nowhere near as ubiquitous in smartphones as it is in PCs. However, smartphone makers will have learnt from the high return rates of early, Linux-based netbooks and realised they have to deliver a PC-like user experience if they want smartphones to conquer the mass market.
On the flip side, they've realised that the real money from smartphones is likely to come from the products and services people access on them. An OS designed in-house can be optimised to deliver the phone maker's own services and thus increase profitability. Additionally, we doubt any of them want Google's Android to be the dominant smartphone OS.
