I thought, as a person with an economic background, I should take a step aside from writing technical tutorials and take a look at the general market situation that Samsung’s Bada is facing. Today we will discuss how Bada Phones could compete with the iPhone.

The success or failure of Bada will depend on how much consumer’s attention Samsung will be able to capture and on how many third-party developers they will be able to convince. Right now these are still two faces of the same coin. There are no sales figures to show, only estimations.  Therefore developers are forced to evaluate the potential opportunities from the perspective of normal consumers – asking themselves the same question: “Would I buy Samsung Wave for my own private use?“.

Samsung’s S8500 Wave seems to set an epic milestone in the history of mobile devices. There are some features about it that we have never seen before:

• the energy-efficient and unbelievably clear and bright Super AMOLED screen
• the first 1Ghz mobile processor
• a new platform (Bada) that strives to unite the best things we know from other platforms, but still keeping itself battery-life-friendly and fast

Combined with the rumored relatively low price tag of the Wave, if somebody let me choose between a brand new iPhone and a Wave, I’d choose the latter in half of a heartbeat. And I am sure I am not alone. In that light, in my opinion, Samsung could easily reach the 10Million sales of Bada phones (iPhone also was at approx. 10Million after the first year on the market) by the end of 2010.

Nevertheless, as you may know, the big iPhone is marketed with a slogan “There is an app for everything“. It’s easy to run your mouth like that, if your appstore is 134,000 apps heavy. That one, as well as the fact that Apple earned about $75Million in December 2009 alone simply by running the appstore, incredibly impresses other manufacturers, including Samsung (and you wondered why Samsung needs an own OS?? ). This is also one of the reasons these manufacturers (including Samsung) announced the highly doubtful Wholesale Applications Community at MWC2010.

The users love apps. They love to find an app that solves their problems “on the go”, no matter how insignificant that problem or need is. That’s why they spend about $4,37 each month on average for apps. The technical specs of a smartphone are not enough to impress a consumer nowadays. The smartphone has become merely an interface between the user’s needs and their solutions. If Bada is to become competitive in the long term, it will have to provide the “goods” and do so fast. The only way to do it is by convincing a huge amount of developers to help you out.

So it is somewhat of a vicious cycle. As a developer who is evaluating the future of Bada, I am willing to give it a try only when other developers are also willing to join the party. Because then I will know, that apart from the excellent technical features of the Wave, it will also offer the consumers the applications that they need. If I see other developers work for Bada, then I will do it, too. It will become a process that intensifies itself automatically – once a certain critical mass of developers is reached.

Samsung will have to work for that critical mass, though.

The first step was to announce a developers challenge with a never-seen-before prizes pot of $2.7Million. The next step is to build Developer Support / Communities in 20 countries, as Dr. Justin Hong, the Vice President of Samsung Mobile, announced. But will that be enough? When we are talking about such huge revenues that are at stake, and the fact that Apple could almost pay Samsung’s last year’s investment in mobile devices software with one month of its appstore earnings, then we understand that you cannot be cheap today when it comes to potential Bada Developers. Although $2.7Million is a record amount, that sum becomes insignificant once you start calculating how much money Samung could be making simply by cutting 30% off your sales in its appstore, just like Apple.

If you are not the market leader, if you are small, then you have to be aggressive and innovative. And there is much that Samsung could be doing like:

• publish bada advertising in specific programmer’s magazines/journals
• send people to relevant universities/colleges and let them talk to future graduates about Bada. Apps are mostly developed by young people.
• etc., etc., etc.

But most of all: be different. For example, what bugs me most about the bada appstore is the certification process – similar to the one we know from iPhone. That one will most certainly cost Samsung developers. In my opinion they should at least provide a possibility to the users/developers to choose whether they want to publish/download/install uncertified apps.

Dear Samsung, invest generously in developers and development tools today, and you will not regret it tomorrow.

Related posts:

1. Developers mad about iPhone: bada is a new alternative
2. Samsung to ship 10 million Waves in 2010
3. 2010: 8 Bada Devices, over 20 Million Users