Samsung has told TechRadar that it is happy with the performance of Bada - insisting that its mobile OS is diesel compared to the mass-market Android's petrol.
Samsung's Bada platform may be approaching two years old, but the company has only shifted 300,000 Bada-toting handsets in its Wave range since the 2010 launch.
But the company seems happy with these figures as Keith O'Brien, head of content at Samsung, explained in an interview with TechRadar.
"We've been responsible for 5.3 million downloads, which, from 300,000 devices, is 17 downloads per device – so from our point of view it demonstrates the engagement we're achieving with Bada and reinforces the strength and appeal of the content we're providing," he told us.
Baby steps
That's despite having only about 40,000 apps in the Bada app store, with the active UK app developer community estimated by O'Brien to be around 200 to 300 strong.
In the second bizarre tech analogy of the day, O'Brien likened various phone operating systems to different types of fuel.
"For me, Bada is a bit like the engine of a car," O'Brien went on. "Whilst you can have a petrol-powered engine which gives better performance, a diesel engine gives you better efficiency.
"Bada for us, because it's designed in tandem with the hardware, gives a more efficient, more integrated device that can draw on our content and services – with Android and Windows, we're putting software on to a device that we've manufactured.
"So that's the petrol engine; they both do the job, incredibly well, but the Bada OS is just a little bit more efficient."
Despite its relatively small numbers – at least compared to iOS and Android - Samsung has high hopes for Bada, promising that the company expects the OS to "become part of the mass market, one of the main operating systems in the world".
