 "Tizen isn't dead: Samsung offering developers $4 million to populate app store")
So you thought Tizen was dead? The OS is only just getting started. The Samsung-backed open-sourced OS now has an app challenge for developers to contribute to the platform. The prize fund for this challenge is a staggering $4 million. Backed by Samsung and Intel, Tizen is luring in developers with the promise of a cash prize for developing apps.
Developers have up to November to familiarise themselves with Tizen and start developing apps for the forthcoming platform. Earlier this month, there were rumours that Tizen has been cancelled by Samsung, but this move would suggest otherwise. The app challenge is already under way and you can sign up to register yourself and your app for it here. Winners will be announced in December.
Not dead yet
As one would have expected, games take a huge chunk of the prize money, since this category can make or break a new OS. The category has about $320,000 set aside as prize money and best game will walk away with $200,000 from the kitty. The best non-game application developed for the platform will win $120,000 of the $210,000 set aside for the category. Additionally, the top 120 HTML 5-based application will win $50,000 each.
This move by Tizen comes not too long after rumours started swirling that the platform was “almost dead” following delays by Samsung. Earlier this month, Russian blogger Eldar Murtazin stirred up a controversy by suggesting that Samsung’s two-month long delay to release the first Tizen phone could have effectively killed the fledgling OS.
Samsung’s Tizen handsets, dubbed Melius and Redwood, were rumoured to release in August. While there was no real confirmation about it, sources suggest that the phones have been delayed for a couple of months. Murtazin instead claimed that Samsung was not stalling the release but killing the OS altogether. Tizen has come back to pack a punch at naysayers and the focus on populating the app store is a great way to start establishing the platform. This has been a crucial deciding factor for operating systems for a long time. With BlackBerry 10 and Windows Phone 8 still fighting to gain a foothold in terms of market share, the significance of high-quality apps at launch cannot be overstated.
(Cover image credit: Tizen Project on Flickr)
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