Samsung announced that they will be dropping Symbian from the OS lineup and launching their own OS efforts next year under the label Bada.  Along with the OS Samsung will also be launching an application store that is targeted to span 30 countries by the end of next year.

In a time where competition for developer attention is fierce between the web, cloud computing and mobile movements, Samsung has the power to add yet another decision for developers looking to target mobile users.  Having shipped an estimated 200 million handsets in 2008 Samsung was second only to Nokia.  Even if they only to choose to drop Bada onto 20% of their handsets over time that will be 40 million+ handsets a year.

There are no details at the moment, just a press release to accompany the bada website.  Hopefully they will have some unique up their sleeve along the lines of what Palm is doing with webOS, but we will have to wait and see, stay tuned.