Tizen overtakes BlackBerry OS to become fourth largest smartphone platform: report

New market research report claims Samsung’s Tizen operating system, which now powers some of the company’s smartwatches and mobile devices, has overtaken BlackBerry OS to become the fourth largest smartphone operating system in Q3 2015. The report adds that Tizen for the first time overtook BlackBerry to earn a spot in the top five OS platforms.

As a reminder, the last handset running BlackBerry OS, the BlackBerry Leap, was launched in May of this year. The Canadian company has since revamped its smartphone business and has mainly focused on its first Android, Priv.

Strategy Analytics Wireless Smartphone Strategies (WSS) service also claimed that Android has seen a year-over-year increase in overall market share. The report adds that Microsoft’s Windows Phone and Mozilla’s Firefox OS, with the exception of BlackBerry, have shown declining market share for smartphone platforms. In addition, he said that Apple has seen strong demand for new iPhone models.

Tizen’s increased share of the OS platform has been largely driven by its recent launches. Samsung launched its second Tizen-based smartphone in India last month, the Samsung Z3 (First Impressions). In July, Samsung India announced that it had sold a “record” one million units of the Tizen-powered Z1 smartphone in the country in the six months following its launch. Samsung’s Tizen-powered Z1, having made a bad first impression in India since launching in January, has performed quite well.

The South Korean company also announced last month that its proprietary mobile operating system (OS) Tizen has the second largest market share in the budget segment of smartphones in India after Android OS.

One of the possible reasons for the increase in the budget segment of Tizen OS may be due to the fact that apart from Google’s Android, there aren’t many options available in the market other than Windows Phone.