Samsung Electronics, a leading mobile phone provider, has launched an application development tool for its own mobile platform.

The bada 2.0 SDK (Software Development Kit) is expected to be a catalyst in expanding the global distribution of bada smartphones, which have already received significant global sales, Samsung said in a statement.

The expansion of the bada platform is led by the success of the seven existing Samsung Wave devices.

The Wave smartphones have proven extremely popular in Europe, China and Southeast Asia, where consumers have been attracted to their affordability and functionality; the recognizable user-experience and touch interface has helped introduce existing Samsung feature phone users to Smartphone services and application experiences.

'Samsung bada and our Wave devices continue to succeed around the world, taking advantage of the mobile technology and brand awareness of Samsung's leadership in the market,' said Shaher Dasouki, head of Mobile Phones Department at Samsung Levant.

'We have brought together our key mobile innovations in bada 2.0, setting the foundation for it to become a leading mobile platform.'

Unveiled at Mobile World Congress in February, bada 2.0 brings together a variety of new capability including multi-tasking, Wi-Fi Direct, Near Field Communication (NFC) and voice recognition.

It enables smartphone users to experience advanced services such as mobile payment, transport pass-card recharge and file sharing without Internet networking.

In addition, considering the increased use of Web using smartphones, bada 2.0 supports HTML5 and improved Flash functions thus offering enhanced usability and web experience.

By supporting standard WAC 2.0, bada aims to greatly expand its developer community, the statement said.

'Bada is a significant innovation and a key component in Samsung's multi-platform strategy; we are committed to investing in its success,” said Dasouki.

“We are expanding our developer community and creating a strong ecosystem that benefits both developers and end-users. Developers have an opportunity to reach a significant customer base with new, entertaining and compelling applications while consumers will receive an outstanding smartphone experience.”

A key feature for developer partners is the introduction of In-app Ads. Using the Ads API (application programming interface) developers for bada 2.0 can easily insert advertisements, creating new revenue opportunities.

Samsung has also upgraded and strengthened its application development environment, providing developers with increased support.

An emulator has been added to foster a development process suitable to the target environment. Tools such as Profiler optimise the device's performance ensuring that resources like memory and processing power are used to their fullest capacity.

Bada 2.0 SDK can be downloaded from the bada developer site (developer.bada.com), according to the statement. – TradeArabia News Service