Samsung’s Tizen gets .NET support

Months after embracing Microsoft’s .NET, Samsung has formally added support for the software framework to its Tizen platform. The new development is for Tizen 4.0, which will be released in September this year.

Samsung had brought out the first preview of .NET Core support and some new Visual Studio tools for Tizen last November. But now, the Korean giant is on the move to make developers familiar with .NET Standard and Xamarin.Forms. This is apparently aimed to expand the app ecosystem of the open source platform. “The first official version of Tizen .NET will be released in September 2017 as a part of Tizen 4.0. Until then, several previews or beta versions will be released in every two or three months so that developers can begin making themselves familiar with Tizen .NET and give early feedback,” Samsung’s developer team wrote in the official Tizen roadmap page.

The Tizen 4.0 public release with .NET support will be available for both ARM and x86 architectures. Though Microsoft’s framework will initially bring new apps to Tizen-based smart TVs, the upcoming support would be expanded across wearables like Samsung Gear smartwatches and even smartphones, over time.

Some initial reports suggest that apart from the range of Samsung’s hardware, Tizen will also make its presence felt on development boards such as Raspberry Pi and Artik. This is likely to boost the developer community’s interest in Samsung’s platform, when building their next apps.

Tizen is already competing against Android and iOS. But the addition of development board compatibility will make the platform a major rival of Android Things, which Google recently launched to support IoT devices. Samsung is already giving away huge cash prizes to developers to attract them to its platform.

Apart from Samsung, Huawei, Intel, Panasonic and Vodafone are members of the Tizen Association. Interestingly, all these players are also supporting Microsoft in its major software developments.