After a rocky start, Samsung has managed to sell one million units of the Tizen-powered Z1, primarily in countries such as India and Bangladesh.
Samsung has been trying to push its own Tizen operating system to the masses since last year, first with the Gear smartwatch and recently with the Z1 smartphone. Now, the company has finally managed to reach a significant milestone of one million units sold with its entry-level Z1 smartphone after nearly six months on the market.
The initial response to the device in India, where it was first launched wasn"t very good, but Samsung continued to lower the price of the device until it was competing with feature phones and Chinese white-box smartphones.
It was also reported that Z1 was a top-selling smartphone in Bangladesh recently and showed healthy growth in a market dominated by inexpensive Android smartphones. To celebrate the device"s success, Samsung will now be launching a Gold Edition Z1 with free apps and games bundled with it. The pricing and availability of the device hasn"t been announced yet.
Samsung is hosting a Tizen developer conference in India on 30th and 31st of July and plans to launch more devices running on the OS towards the end of the year. If the company positions the devices well, Tizen could turn out to be a cheaper alternative to entry-level Android smartphones.
Source: Economic Times of India