Over the past few months we have covered an endless stream of rumors about Samsung’s Tizen smartphone. The company was originally supposed to release said smartphone last year, but it confirmed twice that the device had been delayed. Now Samsung Tizen smartphone isn’t expected to be released until later this year, even though the company is highly likely to showcase it at Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona next month. Rumor has it that the delay might have been caused by Samsung’s decision to use Intel’s Merrifield system-on-chip, as opposed to one from rival Qualcomm.
Qualcomm leads its rivals in the mobile SoC market due to the fact that it offers SoCs with built-in LTE, Samsung has used Qualcomm’s offerings in variants of its flagships that have been released in LTE markets. Intel looks to compete with Qualcomm on this front with its new Merrifield SoC, which too is LTE-enabled. Being one of the major contributors to the Tizen Association, it wouldn’t shock anyone if the first Samsung Tizen smartphone came touting Intel SoCs. Moreover, mobile devices running on the Silvermont architecture based Merrifield SoC are expected to be showcased at MWC 2014. If this is the case, and Samsung has opted to go with Intel instead of Qualcomm, then that would mean a further delay, we probably shouldn’t expected a release until at least Q2, 2014.