Samsung Electronics has decided to move a number of software engineers out of its mobile unit to other parts of the company.
About 500 software engineers from the company’s mobile unit will transfer to its consumer electronics, TVs, network, printer and its corporate software R&D divisions.
Why?
“To further strengthen the company’s overall software prowess,” the company said in a statement. The focus will be “to enhance our competitive edge in the Internet of Things (IoT) industry and increase synergies for the Tizen platform,” it said.
Tizen is an operating system the company has been developing internally with partners including Intel.
The irony is that this means the company will have less software power focusing on developing its own platform to power upcoming smartphones.
Samsung didn’t comment on how many engineers will remain within the mobile unit after the move.
As of 2013, the world’s largest smartphone maker had a total of 40,506 software engineers, up from 33,449 in 2012 and 27,889 in 2011, according to the company. It didn’t provide a breakdown of engineers by unit.
Samsung has, for a long time, struggled to introduce a smartphone running on the Tizen operating system, a platform that it has been developing to compete with the likes of Google’s Android. A vast majority of Samsung’s smartphones currently operate on the Android platform.
“It sounds like (Samsung) doesn’t plan on going big with Tizen on its smartphones,” said Song Myung-sup, an analyst with HI Investment & Securities in Seoul. “The move will likely help resolve convergence issues that arise when connecting network devices like TVs and wearables with smartphones, but this shows less determination on Tizen smartphones,” Song said
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