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Huawei has a warning for Samsung: don’t put all your eggs in the Tizen basket.
The Chinese telecommunications giant has faced some pressure from carriers to design smartphones running Samsung’s Tizen operating system, but it has consistently declined those overtures after determining that “Tizen has no chance to be successful,” said Richard Yu, head of Huawei’s consumer business group, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal posted over the weekend.
Yu told the Journal that Huawei has also explored the possibility of moving away from relying on Google’s Android mobile operating system in its handsets, but such a move doesn’t make sense at this juncture.
“We have worries about Android being the only option, but we have no choice,” Yu told the Journal. “We have a good collaboration with Google.”
Samsung has been pushing its open-source Tizen operating system in everything from wearables to TVs but has, so far, been unable to get a successful Tizen-based smartphone to consumers. In July, the Korean electronics giant postponed the rollout of its Tizen-powered Samsung Z smartphone in Russia. Repeated Tizen delays have caused some to wonder if even Samsung is having trouble seeing value in its own OS.
Samsung is the world’s largest Android device maker, but it has been developing Tizen as an alternative to Android, which currently dominates the smartphone market with a more than 80 percent market share.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, Huawei isn’t only sold on Tizen being a failure. While stopping short of saying that the Windows Phone mobile operating system has no future, Hu said Huawei has lost money on Windows Phone-based devices and has since put all devices running the operating system on hold.
“Even for Windows Phone, it’s difficult to be successful,” Yu told the Journal.
CNET has contacted both Huawei and Samsung for additional comment. We will update this story when we have more information.
