Samsung reportedly developing high-end Tizen smartphones for 2016

Samsung's home grown Tizen OS has been in the market for a while now, on the company's wearable devices, TVs and few smartphones- Z1 and Z3. These smartphones haven't been able to grab a definite user base as they pack low-end specs.

Now, if a new report is to be believed, Samsung is preparing to launch a high-end Tizen based smartphone next year. The details of the smartphones are however, not yet clear.

Samsung has been pushing its Tizen operating system for a while now, but hasn’t been able to gain much user interest.The first Tizen powered phone, the Samsung Z1 made its debut in the Indian market, followed by other Asian countries. After making a poor first impression in India, later it performed reasonably well. In July, Samsung India announced that it sold 1 million units of the Z1 in the six months since its launch. The second smartphone Samsung Z3 was launched in India in October. Last month, Samsung announced that Tizen had the second larget market share in the budget segment of smartphones in India after Android OS.

Tizen is a Linux-based operating system co-developed by an alliance of global tech firms including Samsung and chip maker Intel. Recently, Tizen OS overtook BlackBerry OS to become the fourth largest smartphone operating system in Q3 2015. This was the first time Tizen surpassed BlackBerry to gain a place in top five largest operating system platform.

The Tizen is yet to get a proper hardware support. If things turn out to be well for Tizen powered smartphones, its possible that some of the Samsung Z series phones could have improved hardware in their upcoming models.

The aim of Samsung is to slowly move away from Google's Android ecosystem and create a new Tizen ecosystem. With the new high-end smartphone, Samsung aims to expand Tizen's user base.With Samsung's support, Tizen might take off, despite its current low PR profile.