Bada 2.0 (Mobile OS by Samsung) released

Sorry downvoted you by mistake. I also wonder which of their handsets run Nada?

I've written Bada apps (CTO at a startup that's done quite a few of them), but personally can't compare directly to Android/iOS as I've not worked with those.

The toolkit is generally rough and you'll have to re-invent the wheel many times. You'll thank yourself for using a cross platform tool for anything but the most basic apps. One of our best selling apps on the Bada platform was made using FlashLite, and for games we've been using the Marmalade SDK (formerly Airplay, http://www.madewithmarmalade.com/)

No.

Bada is more for lower end smart feature phones. As the lowest of the low end market gets more capability, you need an OS that's lighter than Android but better than the Java ME junk from 5 years ago. Thus, Bada. It's an OS for smarter dumb phones.

This is 2.0 and Bada's been around a couple years already. For now, it's more low end than Android, but Samsung's reach is huge these days and I'm sure they privately see it as a nice contingency plan and bargaining chip to balance against Android, as the technologies and business relationships evolve.

I doubt Google will try to take things more vertical with Motorola, but it's one possible scenario where Samsung will be pleased to have a headstart should they need to put another OS on their leading devices.

Samsung's also been developing Enlightenment (previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495826 ).