The entire Tizen project as well as continued efforts in Google competitors like Bixby is Samsung hedging their bets to leave. Samsung is probably the only Android OEM who could leave without going out of business: People would buy the next Galaxy no matter what it ran, and Samsung has the clout to push all the major app developers to push to their own store.

Some people would buy the next Galaxy. Plenty of people wouldn't, though, as soon as the helpful employee at the T-Mobile store warned them they couldn't reinstall their old apps on the new phone. It would be a really risky move. I imagine they'd have done it already if it weren't so likely to fail.

Bear in mind, Tizen supports Android apps. Samsung would have a lot of work to do here, but would have the pull to get the top X apps on their market, even if it took paying devs to list them. Then just add a migration tool like Google has on their Pixel devices that plugs into their old phone and downloads all of the same apps on their new phone (and probably would report back to Samsung which apps they were unable to do so with so they know who to encourage), and voila.

I'm sure there'd be some loss, but Samsung would likely come out doing fine. Even if they lost some market share, their profits would likely go up in the end, since they'd be the ones pulling the app market cuts and such.

>Then just add a migration tool like Google has on their Pixel devices that plugs into their old phone and downloads all of the same apps on their new phone

And be pleasantly surprised when none of their Google apps transfer over? Good luck with that.

Google Apps are important in some markets, but far less so in other markets.

Samsung might lose a percentage of the SV customerbase, but everyone who’s not relying on Google accounts wouldn’t really notice.

Multiple jurisdictions are investigating the antitrust implications of how Google Apps are controlled on Android.

We'll see if this is still a problem in a couple years.

Samsung already tried to have their own app market. It was terrible and failed. Other companies like RIM tried paying developers to port to their platform. It didn't make any difference.

It would not have access to Google services and would end like Windows phone.

Nope. Samsung would not have survived. First their stock price will drop as soon as they announced the departure from Android. The market would not have any confidence in any alternative, because history has taught us well. Second, as others have already pointed out, it is either Android or iOS. Try spin up a new mobile OS today and I guarantee you it would be hard to recreate the existing ecosystem. Samsung has the money, but good luck getting enough apps. You'd have to build a whole new interpolation layer so no one has to rewrite, ot rewrite as little as possible. That will take at least a year. Testing stability, reimplement every feature in modern mobile is going to be a multi-year project. By then, someone else would have taken Samsung's place. XiaoMi would is Samsung's contenter right now.

It is not just hedging their bets. One company can't rely on another company. You see it with Apple Maps, Siri, etc...

The alleged game of chicken, and we don’t know what else happened.

FYI,Samsung's tvs and watches are running Tizen instead of Android.

And they're horribly buggy messes. Samsung knows this, but is too stubborn to admit it.