NTT DoCoMo Inc, Japan’s biggest mobile phone carrier has indefinitely shelved its plans for a Tizen launch, which was slated for late March 2014.
The company has said that the main reason for it putting Tizen on hold is that research from IDC Japan has showed the overall smartphone market (in Japan) has only grown a mere 2% from April to September. There are other rumours that this was because of Development delays with the Tizen OS and that it was not ready to be deployed on a smartphone, but nothing public has been stated.
“The market is not big enough to support three operating systems at this time,” Docomo spokesman So Hiroki
NTT DoCoMo have been one of the loudest voices calling for a Tizen release and this news can only be seen as a major set back to Tizen. They are however still working with and contributing to the Tizen project in order to develop their own Tizen product line.
This isn’t the first time that a Tizen launch has been delayed with original expectations of a late 2012 release which became a late 2013 release which now becomes, well, the jury is out on that one at the moment.
As Tizen repeatedly doesn’t find its way out of the starting blocks, its allowing Firefox OS, Jolla Mobile and potentially BlackBerry to gain market share, which can only be a bad thing.
There is no comment from Samsung at this time.
All eyes are now looking towards Mobile World Congress 2014 to see if there is a potential Tizen unveil there. Will Samsung reveal anything? Lets hope so ……
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