Gigantic Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung has announced it is launching its own mobile operating system in December. Bada (which means ocean in Korean) will be an open-source platform for non-smartphones, giving developers a platform upon which to write apps of all kinds… I guess making them smartphones after all. But is Samsung looking to take market share from the big guys like Apple, Microsoft and Google?

I like what Samsung is trying to do here: they see that, while smartphone sales are still high despite the recession and the future looks bright, there are still millions and millions of plain old cell phones being sold out there. This market is demanding all the same features as the smartphones are getting – music, photos and social networking capabilities – without the hassle that sometimes comes with one. The manufacturers are responding with a hodgepodge of lousy OSes, so there is an opportunity here for leadership and a marketshare grab for Samsung.

I see this creating a better cadre of low-end cell phones, which could ultimately help push up the low-end of smartphones, too.

The official launch is in December, and Samsung will drop the first SDK then, too, so we’ll have a better idea of the range of capabilities we can expect to see on every-day phones then. In the meantime, check out the Bada website for the latest details.

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