According to known leaker Eldar Murtazin, Tizen is not only delayed, but actually dead. It seems Samsung will be back to square one: Android.
“Tizen is almost dead. It isn’t delay. That’s cancel of the whole project. I doubt that samsung will launch more than one device for 2014” – Eldar Murtazin
Tizen is already at version 2.2 beta, but you wouldn’t know about it since it hasn’t launched on any device yet. Samsung might launch one device with it this year, but it’s not going to save it. I think Samsung will learn, just like Nokia will learn soon, too, that this is an Android world, and they just live in it.
It’s very hard to compete with the very established iOS ecosystem, and the “ubiquitous” Android ecosystem and all its hundreds of partners that help this ecosystem survive and strengthen itself. So far there hasn’t been any other new mobile operating system that has succeeded in this market, after Android came out. Blackberry 10 will most likely be dead a year or so from now, and you could argue WP8 has found some success, but that hasn’t stopped Nokia from declining in market share and revenues.
If Nokia were smart they’d hedge their bets and start making Android phones, too. The $250 million they receive from Microsoft every quarter is not nearly enough to account for how much money they’re losing by not going Android. That’s only half a million devices sold at $500 each – in a quarter. Even HTC makes ten times more with Android, with a single device. Plus, Nokia must be paying Microsoft at least $10 (up to $30) for each WP8 license, so that almost certainly cancels out what Nokia is making from Microsoft from the exclusivity deal.
Now that Samsung will stop treating Tizen like it’s supposed to be their “own iOS”, and realize that Android is the only way going forward for them, and the reason why they’re so incredibly successful in the mobile market right now, maybe they’ll start focusing on making the Galaxy S series software and hardware great again, until Galaxy S4‘s successor, the Galaxy S5, is launched.