Tizen Open Source OS Gains 15 New Members

The open source OS Tizen Association has added 15 new members to an existing lineup of organizations signed on to its three-month old partner program, including mobile game publishers, operators, application developers, mobile software management vendors and telecommunications companies.

New members include AccuWeather, Acrodea, Baidu, CloudStreet, Cyberlightning, DynAgility, Gamevil, Inside Secure, Ixonos, Nomovok, Piceasoft, Red Bend Software, SoftBank Mobile, Sprint and ZTE.

Sprint is a particularly interesting addition to the Tizen fold—the carrier joined the association in 2012 and left last year before re-upping now.

Tizen launched a partner program last November with 36 members, subsequently adding one more prior to the newly onboarded group of 15, bringing the total of organizations in its partner program to 52 and the overall number of participating companies, including board members, to 62 entities.

“Tizen allows vendors and operators the freedom and flexibility to decide what type of service is best provided to the end users,” said Ryoichi Sugimura, a Tizen Association Board Member from Japanese carrier NTT Docomo. “We are gaining support from all segments of the connected device ecosystem, as more organizations realize the opportunity in providing smart phones and connected devices globally from the high end to the low end of the market.”

Whether Tizen can become a viable alternative to Google‘s (GOOG) Android dominance lacks an answer at this point. So far, aside from the few Tizen OS-based developer handsets that have surfaced, the biggest noise about bringing an open source smartphone to market has come from Samsung, which, nonetheless, has waffled about target markets and debut dates for nearly a year. But this month the Korean device maker is slated to deliver a Tizen OS mobile device selling through NTT Docomo and French telecom Orange SA in a number of geographies, although not in the United States.

With the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona beginning in less than two weeks, Tizen has sent out press invitations for the supposed unwrapping of a wave of new devices running the open source OS. We’ll know soon enough which, if any, of the new members shows up connected to the new devices debuting in Barcelona.

The Tizen OS is a Linux-based operating system springing from Nokia’s (NOK) defunct 2010 MeeGo project with Intel (INTC), subsequently taken over by the chipmaker and Samsung and overseen by the Linux Foundation. It supports HTML5 and is designed to support tablets, netbooks, handsets, smart TVs and other devices, enabling wireless carriers to deliver their own services. Big names, including Huawei, LG, NTT Docomo, Samsung, Vodafone and other heavyweights sit on its board of directors.