Samsung launches Bada 2.0 kit

Despite its strong integration of Android and Windows Phone 7 on its tablets and smartphones, Samsung has renewed a commitment to its own mobile operating system. It says the bada 2.0 software development kit delivers improved performance and enhanced stability through its new features.

Samsung Electronics announced the bada 2.0 SDK (Software Development Kit), an application development tool for Samsung’s own mobile platform. bada 2.0 is expected to be a catalyst in expanding the global distribution of bada smartphones, which have already received significant global sales.

The expansion of the bada platform is led by the success of the seven existing Samsung Wave devices. The Wave smartphones have proven extremely popular in Europe, China and South-east Asia, where consumers have been attracted to their affordability and functionality: the recognisable user-experience and touch interface has helped introduce existing Samsung feature phone users to Smartphone services and application experiences.

‚Samsung bada and our Wave devices continue to succeed around the world, taking advantage of the mobile technology and brand awareness of Samsung’s leadership in the market,‚ said Paulo Ferreira, Product Management and Business Solutions at Samsung South Africa. ‚We have brought together our key mobile innovations in bada 2.0, setting the foundation for it to become a leading mobile platform.‚

Unveiled at Mobile World Congress in February 2011, bada 2.0 includes many compelling, new features. Borne of Samsung’s heritage in innovation, bada 2.0 brings together a wide variety of new capabilities including multi-tasking, Wi-Fi Direct, Near Field Communication (NFC) and voice recognition. It enables smartphone users to experience advanced services such as mobile payment, transport pass-card recharge and file sharing without Internet networking.

In addition, considering the increased use of web using smartphones, bada 2.0 supports HTML5 and improved Flash functions thus offering enhanced usability and web experience. By supporting standard WAC 2.0, bada aims to greatly expand its developer community.

‚bada is a significant innovation and a key component in Samsung’s multi-platform strategy – we are committed to investing in its success. We are expanding our developer community and creating a strong ecosystem that benefits both developers and end-users. Developers have an opportunity to reach a significant customer base with new, entertaining and compelling applications while consumers will receive an outstanding smartphone experience,‚ added Ferreira.

A key feature for developer partners is the introduction of In-app Ads. Using the Ads API (Application Programming Interface) developers for bada 2.0 can easily insert advertisements, creating new revenue opportunities. Samsung has also upgraded and strengthened its application development environment, providing developers with increased support. An Emulator has been added to foster a development process suitable to the target environment. Tools such as Profiler optimise the device’s performance ensuring that resources like memory and processing power are used to their fullest capacity.

bada 2.0 SDK can be downloaded from the bada developer site (developer.bada.com). Samsung has enhanced the ‚Samsung Apps’ retail store and expanded full availability through to 121 countries worldwide. With this 2.0 version, more differentiated functions will be offered from Samsung Apps, including new purchasing options and recommendations. Samsung Apps has proven a popular destination since the launch of the Samsung Wave, the first bada based smartphone in June 2010. It received 10 million application downloads in just 3 months and passed the 100 million-mark in March 2011. The store currently houses approximately 40,000 applications.

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