Fearing competition Samsung may avoid US for Tizen launch

Samsung may be prepping its Tizen release soon, but it looks like it won’t be bringing the operating system to the US. A Samsung executive based in the country has reveled that Tizen may not be heading to the US any time soon, fearing competition from other operating systems.   In an interview with FierceWireless, Ryan Bidan, Samsung’s Director of Product Marketing for the company’s US Mobile Operations has hinted at the country not being taken into the Tizen fold in the near future. “We don’t feel the U.S. is a great test market for those kinds of products,” he said. “The U.S. market is pretty mature. Bringing a new entrant here that doesn’t meet a certain performance bar would be a challenge. Recognizing that, we don’t want to set ourselves up for failure.”   The stage for the first Tizen phone to be unveiled is set and the MWC next month is likely to play host to the new operating system. Post the debut, the phone is expected to start shipping a month later in March. Of course, the pricing and miscellaneous details for the phone have not been revealed just yet.   Samsung laying focus on Tizen is widely said to be an indicator that it is trying to put a certain distance between Google and itself, especially after talk about the companies’ rivalry seems to be going to town. Samsung has essentially started to be a name as big as Android, even while running Google’s operating system. This is not an isolated case, though. **Sony** has recently revealed too that it is in active talks with Microsoft over adopting the Windows Phone platform all over again. One operating system is clearly not enough anymore.   On a side-note, Bidan, in the interview also acknowledged that software is something Samsung is invested in but end up overdoing at times. He estimated that Samsung went through well over 80 different software features before unveiling the Samsung Galaxy S4, in March last year. He says that the company is aware that users could well lose track of them if this continues. As far as Samsung’s wearables ambitions go, Bidan summed up the company’s plan ahead, in relation to the Samsung Galaxy Gear. “For wearables to take off, we need to find those consumer use cases, we need to make them relevant, we need to make them interesting.” You can check out our review of the **Samsung Galaxy Gear** here.   (With inputs from agencies)