It seems that Samsung is truly inspired by Prime Minister of India’s ‘Make in India’ program as it plans to manufacture Tizen operating system based smartphones in India.
Samsung had recently announced its first Tizen OS based smartphone, Tizen Z1, in India for Rs 5,700. The Samsung Tizen Z1 is the second smartphone to come with the operating system after Samsung Z.
“The Z1 will be manufactured in company’s Noida plant in UP,” Samsung India vice president, marketing (Mobile and IT), Asim Warsi told PTI. He further added, “The Noida facility has a capacity of producing over four million mobile phones a month and manufactures both affordable and high-end devices here.”
Samsung Tizen Z1 is available for Rs 5,700. It offers a 4 inch touchscreen with 480×800 pixels Resolution and comes with a 1.2 GHz dual core processor. It has 4 GB of internal memory, 768 MB RAM, and an expandable storage slot that can accommodate a micro SD card of up to 64 GB.
The Tizen Z1 of Samsung measures 120.4 x 63.2 x 9.7 mm and weighs 112 grams. It has a 1500 mAh battery and a 3.1 megapixel rear camera and a 0.3 megapixel front camera. Besides, this dual SIM smartphone offers 3G, GPS, WiFi, and Bluetooth 4.1.
Tizen mobile platform is based on the Linux Kernel and is being backed by Samsung and Intel together. Way back in June last year Samsung had introduced the first Tizen mobile platform based smartphone – Samsung Z. It has a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED Display and ran on Tizen 2.2.1 operating system. The quad-core powered Samsung Z was first introduced in Russia.
Considering the price tag, the Samsung Tizen Z1 is pitted against the Redmi 1S, Asus Zenfone 4, and other low cost Android smartphones including Android One devices of Micromax, Spice, and Karbonn.
Also, there are two issues surrounding Tizen Z1 in India. Firstly , Samsung has not shared the number of apps that will be available to Z1 and going forward if it really wants to compete with low cost android devices it is going to be critical as everyone knows how many apps are there on Play store.
Secondly, a Samsung spokesperson had earlier said that Tizen based smartphones will meet the unique, entertainment-focused needs of Indian consumers for a personal and reliable mobile experience. Sounds interesting, but there is no information about partnership to get the tailor-made content to address the above-mentioned objective.
Since, Samsung has made it clear, with the announcement of manufacturing Tizen in India, that it has a long term plan in place for Tizen based smartphones; it is need to be seen how do they go about App store and content partnerships.