Samsung said it is working on merging its homegrown “bada” smartphone operating system with Tizen, an operating system project the company is conducting with chipmaker Intel

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“We have an effort that will merge bada and Tizen,” said Tae-Jin Kang, Senior Vice President of Samsung’s Contents Planning Team in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Kang said he didn’t know when the work would be complete but that it was already underway.

When the integration is finished, Tizen will support mobile applications written with bada’s SDK (software development kit). That support will include backwards compatibility for previously published bada apps.

Post-integration, bada and Tizen developers will be given the same software tools (SDKs and APIs), said Kang. The idea is that if developers know how to program in bada, they will understand how to make Tizen apps, too.

Kang’s remarks are of interest because industry observers have long wondered how the Korean tech giant will juggle its many operating systems. Samsung supports at least four mobile operating systems and has at least two different TV operating systems.

There has also been a lot of industry speculation about the value Samsung attaches to bada and the reason Samsung got involved in Tizen, an industry consortium that is producing an open-source operating system. The Tizen project, which incorporates some technology from Intel’s former MeeGo project with Nokia, kicked off in Sept. 2011.

Samsung uses Google‘s Android platform for its highest-end smartphones and tablets. Samsung also produces several phones that run on Microsoft‘s Window Phone OS.

Samsung has found ways to effectively marshal these outside operating systems — the company is the biggest provider of smartphones globally and the second-largest maker of cellphones overall. But focusing on its own OS would give Samsung more control over its devices and more opportunity to differentiate its products from its competitors’.

Since its 2010 launch, bada (the name means “ocean” in Korean) has found surprising traction, especially given the fact that is only available in certain (non-U.S.) markets. In 2011, bada phones made up about 2% of the global smartphone market — greater than the share held by Microsoft’s Windows Phone.

By merging bada and Tizen, Samsung hopes to tap into the existing bada community, including thousands of bada app developers.

There are also basic similarities between the two operating systems, such as the fact they are Linux-based. Kang said the core of the merged OS will be Linux-based, as well.

Samsung is still deciding how exactly to utilize bada and Tizen in upcoming products. Kang said Bada will probably be deployed in Samsung’s lower-powered phones, such as those that run on a single-core processor. Bada could also come to non-phone devices; “We haven’t ruled that out,” Kang said. Tizen is better suited for higher-powered devices that don’t run on Android or Windows Phone, he said.

Bada/Tizen could eventually power a lot of Samsung products, but the transition will take time. Kang said Tizen will probably find its way to “at least one to two” Samsung devices this year. ”Tizen will not become Samsung’s main operating platform anytime soon,” he added.

[Forbes]