Samsung’s first Tizen phone delayed—again

Depending on how you count, this is the third or fourth delay.

Samsung has been slowly working on turning Tizen, the company's home-grown OS, into a real commercial ecosystem. The OS first powered a Samsung smart camera*and then came to a*trio of Samsung smartwatches—both*product categories without established software ecosystems.

But the real test will come with the first Tizen smartphone, where the OS*will have to battle*iOS and Android. Samsung's chosen warrior is the "Samsung Z," which has been granted the title of "world's first commercial Tizen phone." Or at least, it will have that title. Eventually.

The Samsung Z was expected*to launch during Thursday's Tizen event in Moscow, but according to a report from*The Wall Street Journal,*the launch was cancelled just days earlier. This is just the latest in a series of delays for Samsung's OS. Tizen*was originally scheduled to launch on*a high-end smartphone*in*"August or September" of 2013. These plans were scrapped and the launch was then moved to March 2014 in Japan*on*NTT DoCoMo. Those*plans were eventually killed, too, as NTT DoCoMo wasn't convinced that the OS would be successful in Japan's mature market. Tizen was then moved to a July 2014 launch in Russia on the midrange Samsung Z, and now that has been delayed*as well.
Samsung now offers no concrete launch date for Tizen. The company says only that it will*launch Tizen “when we can offer our users a fullest portfolio of applications.” While the initial 2013 launch was accompanied by a quote saying that Tizen would have "thousands" of apps at launch, Samsung currently*seems unsure about its app catalog.

The version of Tizen we played with at Mobile World Congress*looked*like a very good Android clone, and while that's a great base to build on, Samsung will have to show the world why it should pick a clone of Android over*actual Android.*The best part*of Android is*the ecosystem, which is headlined*by Google's killer apps like Maps, Gmail, and Google Now—precisely the things a Tizen phone won't*have.*Google also just got done announcing*a slew of updates at Google I/O.

With Tizen, Samsung has a long road ahead of it, and it sounds like we'll be waiting a while for the company to launch it on a smartphone.