Tizen gizmo adds a WiFi hotspot and cloud services to your car

Samsung’s Tizen-based “Connect Auto” hooks into your car’s telematics system to offer driving analysis, alerts, and an LTE hotspot for in-car WiFi.

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Samsung announced an automotive accessory that runs Tizen Linux, and offers real-time alerts, driving analytics, hotspot services, and more. Samsung Connect Auto connects to the OBD II diagnostics port under the steering wheel where it analyzes telematics and fuel efficiency data, and delivers reports for improving driving behavior.

Connect Auto’s integrates a GPS chip and a 4G LTE radio to communicate with outside entities including emergency response teams and insurance and fleet management companies. The LTE radio can also generate a hotspot to deliver WiFi to passengers. The device is equipped with Samsung KNOX security technology.

Connect Auto is accompanied by a Samsung service that interacts with a smartphone app that “can monitor their driving habits and helps them improve their driving behavior,” says the company.

Connect Auto is a developer focused platform, and will likely be sold as an accessory by car companies and other entities. It’s unclear whether it will be sold directly to consumers. Connect Auto will ship in the second quarter, and will initially be supported by AT&T’s LTE service.
A Tizen-based Software Development Kit (SDK) will enable a wide variety of applications. For example, a fleet management company could use the device to keep tabs on driving behavior, and insurance companies might offer it as part of a rewards program for good driving, says Samsung.

Connect Auto features mentioned by Samsung include:

1. LTE hotspot for WiFi service
2. Fuel efficiency analysis including miles traveled, time on road, and price per gallon info
3. Driving behavior analysis
4. Automated alerts to emergency response
5. Virtual mechanic that recommends maintenance and repair services
6. Usage-Based Insurance (UBI) reports
7. Journey logs for tracking expenses
8. Fleet management applications
9. “Find My Car” app

Connect Auto will be supported with a partner ecosystem of carriers, insurance companies, roadside assistance operators, and maintenance networks, says Samsung. Samsung has also partnered with some unnamed auto manufacturers. The current list of partners includes Amdocs, AT&T, AXA, Blink by Agero, China Unicom, Cisco, Crawford & Company, Ericsson, Europcar, HERE, IBM, Jasper, Oberthur Technologies, Openbay, Orange, Tantalum, and Willis Towers Watson.

Samsung’s news site provided the following Connect Auto Introduction video below, which demonstrates some of Connect Auto’s features. Unfortunately, at the time of this post, the video lacked an audio track.

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Samsung Has Another Tizen Smartphone In The Pipeline

Android and iOS are two of the most widely used mobile operating systems in the world. They have effectively wiped out the likes of Windows Phone and BlackBerry but Samsung is still trying to push Tizen, even though it’s not making that big of a deal out of it. Listing on an import tracking database shows that Samsung has started testing a new Tizen smartphone that will likely be out later this year.

Samsung has seen a considerable amount of the success with the Z1 and Z3. Both Tizen-powered smartphones have sold well in emerging markets like India and Bangladesh. It’s believed that Samsung is going to try and push Tizen in Europe now with a new handset that might arrive in Russia first.

A listing on Indian import tracker Zauba shows that Samsung has imported SM-Z510 in the country for testing. The model number hints that this device will be called the Samsung Z5 when it’s ready to be publicly launched.

There’s speculation that the Z5 might actually be made out of metal which would certainly lend a premium look and feel to the handset, something that has been missing from the Tizen smartphones that have been released by Samsung so far.

No details about the specifications and features are available right now and it’s too soon to say when this handset will arrive and how much it’s going to cost. We’ll find that out in due time.

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SAMSUNG SELLS THREE MILLION TIZEN PHONES IN 2015, BUT IT STILL HAS A LONG WAY TO GO

Tizen, Samsung’s secondary smartphone operating system, is finally making a dent in market share. According to Strategy Analytics, Samsung sold a total of three million Tizen phones during 2015, of which 900,000 were sold during the fourth quarter of 2015. This makes Tizen the fourth most popular OS, just behind Windows Phone and ahead of BlackBerry.

Interestingly enough, Tizen’s 900,000 in total sales during the fourth quarter was down from the previous quarter, which saw total sales of over one million units. Part of that drop could be attributed to the fact that the newer Z3 phone doesn’t offer 4G LTE connectivity. Samsung’s own Galaxy J2, which is run by Android, was actually the best selling smartphone in India as a result.

Samsung has targeted Tizen primarily in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal with its Z1 and Z3 smartphones. The Z3 is the more current model, and was released last October.

Tizen is Samsung’s homegrown OS, while Android is Google’s open source platform. Many believe that Samsung hopes to eventually use Tizen in place of Android at some point in the future, but the Android OS continues to be a powerhouse when it comes to popularity. Depending on what research report you want to believe, Android generally has at least 80 percent of the global market, with iOS making up the majority of the remaining share.
And even when it comes to Samsung’s total sales, Tizen is almost non-existent. According to another report from Strategy Analytics, Samsung sold 81.3 million phones during the fourth quarter of 2015, and nearly 320 million phones for the entire year of 2015. Concentrating on the fourth quarter, Tizen devices only represented 1.1 percent of Samsung’s total sales, and only 0.9 percent when you consider the entire year.
However, Tizen can at least be said to be knocking on the door of Windows Phone. According to Microsoft’s own fourth quarter financials, the company only sold 4.5 million Lumia smartphones during the quarter. Tizen might be much farther away from iOS and Android, but it’s definitely in striking distance of Windows Phone.

So Tizen has a long way to go, but there’s hope, and in particular beyond smartphones. “Tizen OS is well-positioned to grow further,” said Linda Sui, director of wireless smartphone strategies (WSS) at Strategy Analytics. “We believe emerging wearable products will offer more opportunities for Tizen in the short-term as it is hard to challenge the two-horse duopoly in the established smartphone market.” Samsung is already utilizing Tizen OS in its smartwatches.
There’s a good chance that by the end of the year, Tizen might become a bit more of a household name after it overtakes Windows Phone. What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments.

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Samsung really needs a flagship Tizen-based phone now

The Gear S2 and SUHD TV have paved the way for a flagship Tizen-based smartphone from Samsung.

They say it doesn’t make sense to reinvent the wheel. Why, then, is Samsung trying to do it? The long time leader of the smartphone market has been pushing its Tizen operating system for a while now. In fact, in 2015, Samsung said it would have a “varying prices” strategy for its Tizen-based smartphones. So far, that’s amounted to the Samsung Z1 and Samsung Z3, both of which have been sub-par smartphones to say the least. In addition, Google has been making Android better with every new iteration, which makes it even more difficult for Samsung to convince, both consumers and developers, to take note of its own operating system.

But while Samsung’s Tizen-powered phones may be sub-par, there are two products running on the OS that are not. The Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch and the company’s SUHD TVs are two products that run on the Tizen operating system, and they may have provided Samsung with a good avenue to do what it’s trying to. The end game with Tizen is to have more control over all aspects of the devices it makes, which means Samsung will make the processor, the camera sensor, operating system and more. It’s the same vertically integrated system that Apple has been so successful with.

If you’ve used a Gear S2 or a Tizen-powered television from Samsung, you would know that the OS paints a very different picture on those devices. Alongside LG’s WebOS and Google’s Android TV, Tizen is one of the best OS experiences that I’ve personally ever seen on a television. The same can be said about the Gear S2. While a lot of the credit in the smartwatch goes to the rotating bezel, Tizen has a big role to play in its usability. The bezel is intuitive, but Tizen on this watch is responsive, and neither can function as well as it does without the other.

There’s that age-old hiccup though — no apps. It’s been awhile since I’ve been using the Gear S2 now and I’ve not found one application worth downloading. To convince developers to build for it, Samsung needs to convince customers to buy Tizen-based products. And the easiest thing to convince them to buy would be a phone. After all, not everyone can spend over 1 lakh on a TV and smartwatches are still part of a niche segment, waiting to be unleashed.

So, while the Gear S2 and SUHD TVs do pave the way for Tizen to be noticed, what Samsung needs now is to stick to its varying prices strategy but come out with a flagship Tizen-based smartphone. As mentioned above, the end-game is to have its own vertically integrated ecosystem, so a Tizen-powered watch will talk to a Tizen-powered TV, and these will both talk to a Tizen-powered smartphone. You may disregard the Z1 and Z3, but a Galaxy Note 5-powered by Tizen will definitely be interesting to many.

There’s yet another problem here. While flagship phones are good, they make for a low sales market, especially in countries like India. The margins for companies are higher, of course, but the number of products sold are lower. But, the same is not true for a phone in the 20-25k price segment. So, that’s where Samsung should start. What it needs right now is numbers, not money.

While Tizen hasn’t done well on the Z1 and Z3, a big reason for that is also because of the low-grade hardware on the devices. If it hopes to make Tizen it’s OS of choice, then Samsung needs to give consumers something that they yearn to buy and developers something that they can really innovate on.

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