Samsung bada shipments up 355% to 4.5 million units in Q2 2011

Samsung was certainly keen talk up the capabilities of its smartphone OS bada in the run up to launch, but since then the Korean giant has largely kept the platform's performance under its hat.

A little detective work by asymco, however, suggests bada shipments - though some way off competing with Samsung's Android business - are nonetheless on the rise, hitting 4.5 million units in Q2 2011.

That's up 355 percent from the estimated 1 million units shipped during the same quarter last year.

"The number of Bada phones shipped last quarter is not public, however some assumptions can be made that lead to plausible estimates," writes asymco founder Horace Dediu.

"First, we know that Samsung shipped about 3.2 million smartphones in Q2 2010 and that total included Bada and Android (and perhaps even some Windows Mobile). Second, we know that there were about 19.9 million smartphones in Q2 2011.

"Third, Canalys published an estimate that Bada grew by 355 percent year on year. So if we knew how many Bada phones shipped in Q2 2010 we could derive the current Bada shipments and also realize how many of the nearly 20 million smartphones from Samsung were actually Android."

The 4.5 million figure, Dediu claims, is evidence that Samsung isn't solely focused on Google's platform. The company is effectively hedging its bets.

"Considering the increasing importance of Bada to Samsung, it should be clear that Android is not the only source of growth for the company and its transition of feature phones to Bada as well as Android is a key strategic driver for differentiation vis-a-vis low end entrants," he added.

Bada is yet to make its presence known in most major western territories, however.

US based numbers released by Nielsen suggest Android makes up 80 percent of the firm's business, with Microsoft's Windows Phone accounting for the remaining 20 percent.

[source: asymco]