Samsung Boasts 1,000 Tizen Apps For Gear Smartwatches

How do you convince people that your platform isn't a burning one? Why, claim that you have over a thousand apps raring to leap at you, that's how! That might be the thinking behind Samsung's latest infographic which celebrates 1,000 apps available for its Tizen-powered wearables, but we really do have to wonder how much of that is true.

As we know from any app store, like in Android, raw numbers don't exactly prove quality. At the very least, it does imply how easy it is to write apps for it, even if they be terrible ones. Still, Samsung gives examples of some of the apps you might want on your Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo, and Galaxy Gear (once it has been updated to Tizen forever). 22 to be exact. 22 out of 1,000. Encouraging numbers indeed.

There's your usual fitness apps like Runtastic and Endomondo. For social networking and a touch of productivity, you've got EasilyDo and, amusingly, a Baby Sitting baby monitoring app. To keep you from getting bored, Deezer and some games can keep your wrist company. Travel Translator lets you do what your smartphone can, without having to bring out your smartphone, of course. And then there's Drink Water that reminds you to take in that life essential fluid, but you'll have to remind yourself to actually note it down on your smartwatch.

This 1,000 app claim seems to be suspiciously well-timed just after Huawei practically downplayed the relevance, much less the profitability, of the Tizen operating system that runs on these smartwatches. Huawei put it rather bluntly, Tizen "has no chance to be successful". Samsung's delays in launching a Tizen-powered smartphone, attributed to the lack of apps and players on board, seems to reinforce that appraisal.

Maybe Samsung does have 1,000 Tizen apps for its Gear smartwatches, but we can never be sure how many of those are really worthwhile. And maybe it's quite easy to make such apps, since Tizen favors HTML5-based development, but writing a companion smartwatch app is one thing. Writing a full blown Tizen smartphone app is a whole different ballpark. So maybe we can give Samsung this rather premature celebration of apps on its smartwatches, but never mistake it as proof of Tizen's overall potential.

SOURCE: Samsung