Who Owns Tizen?

Samsung Electronics publishes an annual sustainability report covering environmental, social, and governance performance. The company has committed to achieving carbon neutrality for its Device eXperience division by 2030 and for all global operations by 2050. Samsung has set science-based targets for emissions reduction and participates in the Renewable Energy 100 initiative.

Tizen's direct environmental impact is limited as a software product. However, Samsung has emphasized Tizen 10.0's reduced system weight, which allows the operating system to run on entry-level home appliances with minimal processing power. This extends the usable life of lower-end hardware and reduces the need for more powerful components.

Samsung's TV manufacturing supply chain has faced scrutiny over labor practices. The company has reported on supplier audits and corrective actions through its sustainability reports. Samsung is a member of the Responsible Business Alliance and conducts regular supplier audits.

Tizen itself, as an open-source project, has no independent sustainability certifications. The Linux Foundation provides governance but does not certify environmental or social performance for hosted projects.

Smartphone Platform Failure (2015-2017): Samsung's Tizen smartphone strategy failed commercially. The Z1, Z2, Z3, and Z4 were low-cost devices aimed at emerging markets, primarily India, but they could not compete with Android phones at similar prices. The Tizen app ecosystem remained weak, with major apps including Facebook, WhatsApp, and popular games discontinuing support. The ACL application, which allowed Tizen to run Android apps, shut down in 2018. Samsung stopped making Tizen phones after 2017 and closed the Tizen Store on December 31, 2021.

Smartwatch Platform Abandonment (2021): Samsung used Tizen on its smartwatches from the Gear 2 in 2014 through the Galaxy Watch 3 in 2020. In 2021, Samsung switched to Google's Wear OS for the Galaxy Watch 4, abandoning Tizen for wearables. Existing Tizen smartwatch owners could not upgrade to Wear OS, and Samsung eventually stopped providing major software updates for Tizen-based watches. This left users of recent Samsung smartwatches with a discontinued platform.

Carrier Partner Withdrawals (2012-2014): Multiple carrier partners that joined the Tizen Association withdrew without shipping devices. NTT DoCoMo canceled a planned Tizen phone launch in Japan, concluding the market could not sustain another operating system. Sprint, which had backed the predecessor MeeGo project, did not ship Tizen devices. Vodafone and Telefonica similarly did not commercialize Tizen phones. These withdrawals undermined the platform's credibility in its early years.

Security Vulnerabilities (2017): In 2017, security researchers at Mobile World Congress demonstrated vulnerabilities in the Tizen operating system's app store and code. A researcher named Amihai Neiderman told ZDNet that Tizen's code was "the worst code I've ever seen" in a mobile operating system, citing issues in the Tizen Store application. Samsung responded by patching the identified vulnerabilities. The criticism was notable given Tizen's deployment across millions of Samsung TVs and wearables at the time.