Samsung launches bada smartphone platform
EA Mobile, Gameloft and Capcom key partners
It's got a funny name - 'Ocean' in Korean apparently - but Samsung's new bada smartphone platform does matter, because Samsung matters.
With over 20 per cent of global handset market in Q3 2009, it sells a lot of phones.
And with bada badged as the "smartphone for everyone" and hence coming to Samsung's mid-range devices in 2010, there will be a lot of bada-enabled phones around.
For instance, Samsung sold 40 million touchscreen phones in 2009, and predicts it will sell more in 2010.
Formally launched in London today, there weren't a lot of details in terms of devices, which isn't surprising as the first ones won't be out in Europe or Asia until the first half of 2010, but Samsung did reveal its goals for the technology.
For one thing, it will offer common features across all bada devices. These include 3G/wi-fi, GPS, motion sensors, a WVGA resolution screen (at least 480 pixels high and wider), and multipoint touch
Samsung will also port its TouchWiz user interface (as used in Omnia) to enable carriers to customise devices, while there will be a server-based component to support social networking, location-based services and the like.
In terms of the impact on gaming, there were even fewer details but notably of the five content companies who supported the launch three were game publishers. Twitter and Blockbuster were the others.
Capcom demonstrated Resident Evil running on the platform, while EA Mobile and Gameloft said nice things about how they would support bada in future.
Later, during the Q&A session, when asked if gaming was to be a major feature of the platform and whether there'd be any special hardware to support gaming, Samsung responded; "Gaming is a key feature. There will be many games available in the [Samsung Application] store, although games aren't the only application of course. There will be high performance from gaming due to the many sensors of the device such as graphical power and multi-touch."
We'll see as bada becomes reality during 2010.
