Cellphone manufacturer Samsung has taken everyone by surprise by announcing its own operating system Bada - Korean for 'ocean' - will .
The intriguing question is why the company wants to do it. The Smartphone arena is at the moment dominated by a handful of players - Google's Android is making a lot of noise and when the dust settles we'll see where the market puts it (my guess is that it'll do well); Windows Mobile is doing well in the corporate market, so is Symbian, which also has a major toehold in the consumer market alongside the iPhone. Palm may be about to make a major re-entry if the Pre does as well as it hopes.
Samsung, with the Omnia, Toco and other models, has done well in the Windows Mobile market. It's one of the major suppliers. So, what's it trying to fix with a new OS?
We can only speculate. It's either a technical or commercial issue. Technical is difficult; the phones work at the moment so if there's an issue, it's an issue with future releases. Maybe Samsung wants more freedom to dictate its own future rather than hang around and add its overlay (which I find awkward to use) to the Windows Mobile OS. It could also be commercial; some reports suggest Samsung will scrap its Symbian phones in favour of Bada - maybe Symbian is charging too much for its system? Or maybe it's a technical thing with Symbian?
At the moment it looks like a lot of fuss over fixing something which, basically, works. Unless it can do to the market what Apple did with the iPhone two years ago (and I'd predict it won't), I can't see a reason for Bada that's public just yet.
And yes, Sopranos fans, I suppose if it adopts Microsoft's new(ish) search engine then that will make every search a Bada Bing.