Samsung's first wave of Bada handsets

Adam Leach, Ovum

Mobile World Congress, 2010, BARCELONA, SPAIN: Samsung has announced its first Bada-based handset, the Samsung Wave. The handset features HSPA, a 3.3-inch AMOLED display, Wi-Fi and a 1GHz processor. Samsung is aiming squarely at bringing smartphone economics to the mid-tier market with this handset, which is reflected in an unsubsidised price of €330.

The key to Samsung's success with Bada will be its ability to attract developers to its new smartphone platform. To achieve this, it is imperative to offer a compelling developer experience. However, the other side to providing quality SDKs, tools and processes for developers will be deploying devices that will sell well to consumers. Taking a page from Apple's playbook, Samsung knows that developers are consumers too, and that creating a handset that is attractive to consumers is essential to a successful software platform.

According to Samsung, the company shipped 227 million units during 2009 and the best performers in its portfolio were the Star, Jet and Corby – for example, the Star shipped around 10 million units. All of the handsets were based on Samsung's internal operating system, which has now evolved into Bada. It is likely that the 2010 successors to these products will all be Bada-based, which will represent a significant addressable market for Bada applications.

It is still early days for Bada, but we expect that the platform will be one to watch in 2010. Samsung has proven experience of building keenly priced hardware that can achieve high volumes in the market; it remains to be seen whether it also has the skills in software to complete the offering.