Intel and Samsung have announced they have joined forces to produce Tizen, which is an open-source based Linux mobile operating system.

Essentially, this means that Limo and MeeGo are being combined to produce a new Linux-based operating system. This would seem to mean the end for MeeGo, which is featured on the Nokia N9 and for a longtime was thought to be the saviour of Nokia in the smartphone market.

Essentially, the new Tizen operating system will replace MeeGo and is built around HTML5 which is becoming the preferred development method for mobile app's and services. Tizen will be a cross-platform operating system which will support Tablets, Smartphones and Netbooks.

The problem for any operating system is convincing manufacturers to adopt it , but with Samsung on-board they might well use it in some of their devices. However, its a huge risk to include "unfamiliar" operating systems in devices because it puts off a number of consumers.

Tizen will be launching with an SDK in the first quarter of 2012.

We're interested to see how Tizen fares, but we'd expect it to be a niche product that will struggle to rival Android.