They could build a "Android bridge" (an Android runtime for Tizen) and partner with the main app developers (in particular, Facebook) to upload their Android apps on Samsung's own store.
It would be extremely risky but also it would pay off. Otherwise, they will be crushed in the Android phones commoditization race to bottom.
Latest change of mind is that future Tizen apps will be written in .NET Core with Xamarin Forms for the UI.
Or if you want to stay in Android, offering Android runtimes did wonders for the market issues from BlackBerry and Jolla.
Maybe they should look into bringing an AOSP phone without any cloud services (not only without Google, but without any; or at least easily uninstallable, unlike their current offering) and capitalize on recent anti-Google and anti-spying sentiment. That would require renegotiating their contract with Google through.
> The OHA is a group of companies committed to Android—Google's Android—and members are contractually prohibited from building non-Google approved devices. That's right, joining the OHA requires a company to sign its life away and promise to not build a device that runs a competing Android fork.
(cit. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on...)
However that's a lot of stuff that suddenly needs to be replaced and I don't see Samsung able to pull of correctly half of Play Services.
No they aren't. The first Galaxy Gear ran a non-certified version of Android and Google got really upset about it. Launching a phone would be suicide.
As for the alternative services they already have a lot of stuff for the Chinese market and Tizen phones.
IIRC it was their plan for 2016's Galaxy S.
They have just been too comically bad at software in order to pull it off though.