Samsung announces their new open mobile platform

Samsung Electronics has announced their new open mobile platform, Bada, which will compete with the likes of Apple's iPhone OS, Google's Android, Microsoft's WinMo (Windows Mobile),  both Nokia's S60 and Maemo platforms, Palm's webOS, RIM's BlackBerry OS, and countless others.  So, they may have a bit of ongoing competition to break into.

Bada means ocean in Korean, and represents a “vast area where ideas, cultures, and experiences around the world interact with people” according to the brand story on the Bada website.  Makes me feel warm inside. 

They've only just announced Bada, and details are pretty light but what you can glean from the info on the site is that they're working on a framework where application developers can easily plug into “core functions” like the dialer, messenger, address book, etc… and  of course they're going to be opening an applications store. 

So, yeah, yet another mobile platform doing mostly what everyone else is doing, or trying to do.  The good side to all of this is the possibility of innovation.  Yeah, the Bada platform may be doing 98% percent of what the other guys are already doing, but that 2% of pure Bada-ness could be new and pure gold...  which will then immediately be absorbed into the whole mobile platform collective and everyone wins.

Samsung will officially launch Bada and release their SDK (software development kit) in December.  Until then you can check out the pre-launch details at the Bada website.