Last year, Samsung teamed up with Intel and the Linux Foundation to develop Tizen, and open-source operating system for mobile devices. Tizen is one of a few new operating systems (including Firefox OS) to compete with Android for the non-iOS smartphone market. Now, it appears that Samsung may have softened on ditching Android in favor of Tizen.

DigiTimes today reported that Samsung has “slowed down” its development of Tizen. The report’s unnamed “industry sources” stated that Samsung is purposely delaying the development of Tizen, possibly due to competition in the Android market. Samsung’s abandonment of Android could, the report’s sources say, open up the Android market for Samsung competitors such as HTC, LG, and Sony. Android is, by far, the most popular mobile OS in the world. Samsung could see the failure of platforms such as WebOS and BlackBerry 10 as warnings against pioneering new operating systems.

Samsung earlier this month delayed the launch of its first Tizen smartphone. The delay was reportedly due to issues with the OS’s app store.

Samsung CEO JK Shin last week praised Tizen, saying that the OS will be in more than just mobile devices. Samsung envisions Tizen powering user interfaces for cars, bank machines, and point-of-sale devices.

(via DigiTimes)