NTT Docomo has shelved indefinitely plans for a March launch of a Tizen smartphone. Japan's largest mobile carrier said that the smartphone market in Japan wasn't growing fast enough for it to support a third mobile operating system, the Wall Street Journal reports. DoCoMo cited research by IDC Japan showing the country's overall smartphone market grew only 2.2 percent in the April-to-September period from a year earlier.
A spokesman for NTT Docomo said the company will continue to work on developing Tizen phones. Roy Sugimura, director of technology planning at DoCoMo, serves as the chairman of the Tizen Association, which oversees the project. The company also denied that its decision to offer the iPhone in Japan had an impact on its decision to postpone the Tizen phone.
The first Tizen phone was previously expected to launch last year, but the operating system, backed by among others Samsung and Intel, has faced repeated delays. The Tizen Association has said it will unveil devices running the OS at the Mobile World Congress in late February.
