Last week we reported that Japanese carrier NTT DOCOMO announced their support of Samsung’s Tizen platform and would carry its hardware as well. That’s good news for Samsung as NTT DOCOMO is Japan’s largest carrier and would no doubt be a boon for them, but unfortunately it looks like NTT DOCOMO has had a change of heart and will n longer be carrying the Tizen hardware. According to the carrier, the reason behind this is because the Japanese smartphone market was apparently not growing fast enough where the carrier would be able to support three different operating systems simultaneously (iOS and Android being the other two).
This was backed by a recent study by IDC Japan who found that the country’s smartphone market only grew 2.2% from April-September last year. According to the carrier’s spokesperson, So Hiroki, “The market is not big enough to support three operating systems at this time.” Naturally this is quite a big blow to Samsung although they have yet to comment on the matter just yet. All is not lost as Hiroki did state that the carrier would continue to work to help develop Tizen, although when Tizen hardware will see a launch on the carrier’s network remains unknown. Some have speculated that NTT DOCOMO’s iPhone offering could be the reason why they changed their minds, although the carrier has since denied this.
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