BARCELONA (Yonhap News) ― Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s second-largest maker of mobile phones, said Wednesday that it has released the updated version of bada, the company’s proprietary mobile operating system.

Samsung added a multitasking feature and mobile payment technology called Near Field Communication and voice recognition functions to the second generation of its mobile software, bada 2.0, it said.

A string of phone makers and mobile carriers are equipping their mobile phones with the NFC technology in their latest phones.

An NFC-equipped phone can be waved before a register when checking out to make payments.

The company’s first proprietary mobile operating system, which is named after the word ocean in Korean, was announced about one year ago in part of Samsung’s bid to strengthen its software competitiveness as the smartphone battle started to unfold.

Samsung, which makes smartphones built on Google Inc.’s Android, Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 7 and its own bada system, announced a new smartphone in its Wave series, which is powered by bada software, during a four-day mobile fair in Barcelona, Spain.