Samsung Offers Smartphone Software As Competition Intensifies

samsung

SEOUL—Samsung electronic Co. next year will produce smartphones based on its own operating software and encourage software developers to write programs for them, a step that puts the world’s second-largest cellphone maker in competition with some of its key technology suppliers like Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc.

The move is a sign of the rising importance phone manufacturers are placing on controlling their own platform, as companies like Apple Inc., Research in Motion Inc. and Palm Inc. do with their smartphones. Nokia Inc., the world’s largest cellphone maker by unit sales, has two proprietary operating systems for smartphones.
Samsung executives said the company will continue to offer smartphones based on many types of operating systems, including Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and Google’s Android. “We feel we need to be multi-platform in smartphones and cannot just focus on one,” says Lee Ho-soo, executive vice president in charge of Samsung’s strategy for product software and content.

But the company, as it did with regular cellphones, is also seeking to control the direction of its smartphone products by offering its own operating system. The move also provides a hedge in case developers of the other systems take financial or technical steps that Samsung doesn’t like.

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