Firm aims to solidify smartphone lead with new mobile platform


Samsung Electronics said Friday that the firm had sold more than 50 million units of its flagship smartphones Galaxy S and Galaxy S2 in the global market.

The world’s top smartphone maker said the sales of its Galaxy S and Galaxy S2 topped 24 million and 28 million units, respectively, as of June 1. Over 7 million units of the firm’s 5.3-inch display Galaxy Note have also been rolled out globally, it added.

Samsung has been striving to take the lead in the global smartphone industry after it made a six-month late debut compared to Apple’s iPhone introduced in Korea in late 2009.

Since launching the Omnia series for the first time, it has released the Galaxy series, which is named and customized depending on the country.

“This would not have been possible without close cooperation with local small and mid-sized countries in the fields of service, software and sub-parts,” said a Samsung official. “We plan to strengthen our positioning in the smartphone arena through our continual partnership with them.”

In the meantime, Samsung is in the process of rolling out a new open source, standards-based platform called Tizen together with the Linux Foundation.

Considering it crucial to have a proprietary mobile operating system to solidify its smartphone lead, Samsung is integrating Bada and Tizen to launch a Samsung-made reference handset for the platform, an industry source familiar with the matter told The Korea Herald.

“Samsung will also become the firm to roll out the first reference phone for the Tizen OS because it was the first electronics manufacturer to have the initiative to proceed with the project,” the source said.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)