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Comment by rys | Hacker News Reader

Just on point 3, it's not really a matter of getting device vendors to use it. I think it's pretty clear today that incumbent platforms live and die by the quality of their apps and the app delivery and discovery mechanisms.

By extension that means the quality of the developer environment, APIs, device functionality you can use, and related tooling.

Tizen is nothing without that. Samsung Mobile picking it up for 1, 10 or 100 handsets doesn't guarantee success.

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It's true that sales volumes are not guaranteed, but what I meant was that because of Samsung, Tizen is in a position to atleast circumvent the chicken and egg problem that dogs any new mobile OS.

Manufacturers hesitate to bring out devices with a new OS until there is enough developer and user mindshare, but developer and user mindshare grow only when there are enough competitive devices on the market.

Right now, Firefox OS is found only on some low to mid range devices. Ubuntu OS did not even hit the crowdsourced funding target last time. Tizen is in a better position to circumvent this, if Samsung commits to Tizen (which I don't see them doing at the moment) and avoids making the same mistakes as Bada.

The only Tizen phone out in the wild has had some bad reviews. I think Samsung is committed to Tizen for at least a couple more years, mainly as a foil to Google Android, as Samsung has stated repeatedly.

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