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Samsung $500K per year Linux Foundation Platinum membership

It seems that Samsung is stepping up its battle against Apple once again with news that the South Korean company is investing $500k per year to pay for Linux Foundation Platinum membership. Samsung has been gathering momentum and is making the most of its current position in the market by striking while the iron is hot to bolster its position still further.

Recently Samsung took top spot as the world’s number one smartphone maker, leapfrogging Apple in the process and in March the company became the world’s top overall smartphone vendor. Moves by Samsung to encroach upon Apple’s iOS in a bid to further develop the Android and Tizen operating systems (both based on Linux) seem to make sense then. The Linux Foundation Platinum membership, costing $500,000 a year, is the highest level of membership and this huge investment will gain Samsung a seat on the board and a valuable insight into future developments. Other platinum members of the Linus Foundation include IBM, Fujitsu, Intel and Oracle.

News of Samsung’s entry to the Linux Foundation came to us from Apple Insider, sourced from Business Insider. A Linux Foundation spokesperson said, “Having just recently beat out Nokia to become the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, this announcement also makes it clear how Samsung will now try to attack Apple’s position with both the Linux-based Android and Tizen platforms.” It sounds like Samsung means business then and we can only wonder what Apple will make of this development with WWDC 2012 now just around the corner.

Although Google’s popular Android OS leads the smartphone market share it was recently noted that while Apple’s share was slowly continuing to grow, the Android platform had seen a slight fall in uptake. Therefore it’s logical that while Android still dominates, Samsung is expanding its interest into the upcoming Tizen OS as well. Tizen is showing a lot of promise as a mobile operating system and Samsung’s investment in the Linux Foundation shows a keen interest from the company in taking part in further research and development of Tizen.

We’re really interested to hear readers’ views about this news as this looks as though it could rumble on for some time. Do you think there’s room for yet another mobile OS with Android and iOS already so dominant? What do you think about Samsung’s bid to step up the competition against Apple? Let us know by sending your comments to us.

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