Samsung Becomes Platinum Member of Linux Foundation

Samsung, announced on Tuesday, June 5 that it had joined the board of the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member. The seat the board came with a price tag of $500,000 which the leading smart phone manufacturer paid to claim its spot.

The Linux Foundation is a non-profit entity and the money that Samsung has paid will go towards supporting the many open sources projects the foundation runs. The south Korean company will not only get satisfaction from supporting the open source cause but will also get more say in the direction that Linux takes.

Many observers see the recent move by Samsung as an investment in its future. Currently the electronics manufacturer has been on an upward trajectory in the mobile industry and has simultaneously become the largest sellers of mobile phones and smartphones. Using its hard earned momentum he company is investing in areas that will help it sustain its growth in the future. Right now many of the manufacturer’s devices run on open source technologies including their phones and cameras. Samsung is also a big manufacturer of TV and advancements point at a lot of processing will be taking place in next generation TV’s which may require robust operating systems.

Samsung competes directly with Apple in the smartphone arena and has countered Apples’s closed proprietary software by using open-source solutions. In order to keep open-source software development up to speed with proprietary software, Samsung has supported the Linux Foundation. Right now the firm usese Google’s Android software but is keen on the Linux based Tizen OS. The Tizen platform has shown a lot of promise and it is possible that Samsung wants to have some of devices running the software in the future so that it can take on Apple with several types of weapons in its arsenal.