Yesterday Tizen, the open source mobile os led by Samsung, IBM and the Linux Foundation announced the first pre-release of tools for developers to get their hands dirty.

Tizen was born from the remains of Meego that Nokia dumped in favour of Windows Mobile, leaving their partner IBM jilted and looking for a new partner. This played right into the hands of Samsung as they deliberated over WebOs another already proven operating system fell into their hands at no cost. No wonder they dropped the idea of purchasing WebOs for silly money.

Having a quick look, things look very promising. All the things that excited developers about WebOS seem to have been migrated into Tizen. The idea of html5 and javascript app development will give many hope, but the most exciting thing is the Tizen Web API based on the w3c spec. This may influence web browsers and web apps for future devices as these apis are the way the web will going.

The initial screenshots are not the most exciting in the world but looks are not everything in an alpha release and I am sure that  these things will be tweaked along the way.

So in the last year, Samsung have knocked Nokia and Apple from the top smartphone manufacturers, then they have gone and taken Nokia’s OS and if rumours are true are going to release a new phone range based on it in at the Barcelona Mobile Congress at the end of February.   If that wasn’t enough they also announced some cool connected TV technology at CES.

It would be good to get an android competitor, and one that is more open than the google controlled Android, but with bada and  Tizen along with being the largest android seller in the market it looks to me like Samsung hold all the cards.