Thursday, March 10, 2011

Samsung tries its hand at poaching disgruntled Symbian devs for Bada

We can't help but feel like this is one sinking ship coming to the aid of another, but for what it's worth, Samsung has apparently started emailing Symbian developers in India with a very simple message: "if you're unhappy about what's going on, give Bada a shot." Sammy, of course, is referring to Nokia's decision to slowly phase out Symbian over the course of roughly 150 million additional shipped handsets -- not a small quantity, granted, but the platform's still got a definitive expiration timeline attached to it now that's undoubtedly going to sour devs who want a mobile platform that they know will be around for the long haul. Though Bada doesn't have the global traction that Symbian enjoys, it's definitely geared to target some of the same low-end market segments Symbian was starting to gun for over the past couple years... so we suppose we see some synergy. Still, if it were our engineering dollars, we'd be hard-pressed not to target a platform with a little more multi-manufacturer support and worldwide reach -- Android, for instance. Can't blame Samsung for trying!

[Thanks, Peter]