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Samsung's Tizen phone delayed yet again

Samsung's Tizen phone delayed yet again

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Samsung's plans to diversify its portfolio with the introduction of smartphones running the open source Tizen OS have had to be postponed once more. Originally scheduled to launch at a developer event in Moscow yesterday, the Samsung Z has now been delayed to an indeterminate point in the future. In a statement sent to The Verge, the Korean company says that it "plans to postpone" the Russian release of the phone, but will continue to "actively work with Tizen Association members to further develop TIzen OS and the Tizen ecosystem."

This follows the scuppering of plans to release a Tizen handset in Japan last year, which Samsung rationalized as the result of "poor market conditions." The strategy was altered again earlier this year to focus in on a few developing markets — among which Russia was to be the leader — where Samsung anticipates it can do well. But the deadline has been continuously slipping: from the end of June to the third quarter of 2014 to the current indefinite postponement. It's a peculiar situation since Samsung already has Tizen running on multiple smartwatches and was previously able to release smartphones running the Bada OS that was eventually integrated into the development of Tizen.

Samsung's repeated failure to live up to its own roadmap with the Z would suggest that the device and user experience are simply not competitive enough for the modern smartphone market. Unless something drastically changes, the poor market reception that Samsung feared in Japan may be a global issue that prevents the company from ever releasing the phone running its OS.