With the mobile wars already in full swing between iPhone and Android battles, we have not seen anything yet as all the other players are circling their wagons with mobile wars looking to bubble over next year.  With Windows Phone releases slated for October-ish timeframe, and RIM getting ready for their new platform, Samsung is not sitting idle and has been getting ready to attack the mobile sector with a multi-pronged strategy.

Windows, Android and Bada (oh my!)

Samsung of course is helping the Android train continue its full steam ahead march with the latest releases of their custom skinned Android Epic 4G device to go along with their suite of Galaxy line of phones.  The device is getting early positive reviews for its hardware, keyboard, and of course its awesome Super AMOLED screen.

Samsung has also made it very clear that they will be backing several other mobile OS’s, releasing several Android and eventually Windows Phone handsets targeting the "high end" of the market, while taking their new in-house Bada OS to the masses by putting it on the majority of their mid and low end targeted devices.  This area is of course the fastest growing market for them as they have been dominating the mid-tier space with entry/mid level touch screen and texting devices.

As much as iPhone and Android are stealing all the headlines, and are "dominating" the smartphone space in North America, this slide that Samsung showed at their Bada developer education day shows how Samsung is no slouch in the space, and might be best positioned to rise to #1 worldwide over the next couple of years:

The eventual massive rise of the low end of the smartphone market we will be experiencing over the next 18 months will see their Bada "fat middle" strategy really start to pay off.

While I was not too thrilled to hear that they would be releasing yet another OS into the market, I have to hand it to them that for only being ~9 months into the project from a community/education perspective they are doing a fantastic job.  There will definitely be no shortage of carriers and countries carrying Bada devices, as Samsung predicts ~40 million+ Bada devices will be in the market next year all across the globe:

For the time being there will be a lack of solid Bada devices for us here in North America which hurts their application strategy some in the short term, as the iPhone/Android blinders are in full effect.  Not having some high-end devices here to excite the developers could be an initial misstep.  So far they seem to be doing a good job of getting the majority of the "major" app and game developers such as Twitter, Facebook, Gameloft, etc, to get their software running on Bada.  Right now I see the biggest battle with Bada happening versus Nokia in the Europe/Asia markets as they both make big pushes with their own OS’s and target that fat middle.

The mobile sector is a weird space.., its neither a marathon, nor a sprint, but a combo of the two with precisely executed product releases, with little to no wiggle room for mistakes.  I look forward to the continued competition as it’s us consumers who will be the big winners with cheaper, more advanced handsets, with more apps and features then we could have ever imagined a few short years ago.