Samsung: Not going Google way in TVs – Times of India

Google’s Android TV may seem like a popular choice for some TV brands, but not for Samsung. The company, which recently ‘dumped’ its Tizen OS in smartwatches in favour of WearOS, says it is certainly not doing so for TVs.
Speaking to Protocol, Samsung said that it would continue to stick with Tizen for its TVs. “Tizen still is the default platform for our smart TVs going forward,” a Samsung spokesperson said.
Tizen is Samsung’s own software platform and has been powering its TVs and wearables for quite some time now. However, at the recently-held I/O 2021 conference, Samsung and Google announced a new wearables partnership. As per the collaboration, the duo are combining Wear OS — Google’s operating system — and Tizen-based platform for wearables. “We’re combining the best of @wearosbygoogle and @SamsungMobile Tizen into a unified wearable platform. ⌚ Apps will start faster, battery life will be longer and you’ll have more choice than ever before, from devices to apps and watch faces, said Google in a post via its official Twitter account.
As for TVs, Tizen has been a successful platform for Samsung. According to research from Strategy Analytics, Tizen retained the number one position overall in the year 2020, with a share of 12.7%, up from 11.6% a year earlier. Tizen was followed by LG’s WebOS (7.3%), Sony PlayStation (6.4%) and Amazon Fire OS (6.4%).
“Samsung’s smart TV market leadership gives it a great foundation to sustain Tizen as the leading TV streaming platform for years to come,” said David Watkins, director, TV Streaming Platforms. “However several other major players are also growing rapidly and many have the resources to build a serious challenge to Samsung if the strategic ambition is there.”
“As streaming on TVs becomes the preferred video viewing behaviour, content providers will rely increasingly on the UI, analytics, advertising and content discovery capabilities of connected TV platforms and the firms controlling them. As we are seeing in smartphones today, we envisage strategic conflicts eventually emerging between content and TV streaming platforms which will raise challenging structural and regulatory questions,” added David Mercer, VP and Principal Analyst.