Samsung Pushes Own Bada OS with Wave Smartphones

Samsung’s three new Wave series smartphone will run on its own proprietary operating system, as it makes a bid to become more of a player in the global software market.

On Tuesday the S. Korean consumer electronics giant unveiled Wave 3 with a 4-inch AMOLED screen and a 5 megapixel camera, as well as a less expensive Wave M and the entry-level Wave Y.

The Wave M will come installed with chatON, Samsung’s first instant messaging tool. The Wave Y with a 3.2-inch display is slated to debut in October.

These three new models augment the 7 Wave series models Samsung has introduced since it first released its bada-based product in May of 2010.

Samsung has become the world’s number 2 smartphone maker during the second quarter on the success of its Android-based Galaxy S smartphones.

Until recently Samsung has been content to base its smartphone lineup on Google’s increasingly popular Android interface. The new strategy aims to unify Samsung’s extensive list of smartphones, tablets, PCs, TVs and other consumer electronics under its own software platform. To that end it has been aggressively expanding its Samsung Apps online application store.

The Wave series have built-in access to Samsung Apps with around 13,000 applications. The Android system has spawned 100,000 apps while the Apple Apple store offers 300,000. However, Samsung’s dominance in the consumer hardware industry makes it a formidable competitor who has surpassed rivals that were once deemed out of its league, like Sony, Nokia and Rim. Its much-anticipated purchase of Hewlett-Packard’s world-leading PC business will add to Samsung’s market prowess.

To continue to expand global shipments Samsung unveiled four new mid-to-low end Android models. The move eyes Apple’s plans to launch a lower-cost version of the iPhone 4.