Today, Rogers Wireless announced the immediate availability of the Samsung Wave, the cousin to the Galaxy S series running its own Bada operating system instead of Android. While not a lot of good things have been said about the Bada platform, especially when compared to the robust existing offerings from Apple, Google and RIM, its mere existence brings home the point that phone manufacturers, from Samsung to HTC, are seriously considering branching into independent software platforms to embed onto their hardware.

But where is the value here for Samsung? Developers will likely balk at the idea of developing for yet another mobile platform, especially after realizing that it is a lot harder to make money off their apps than they first considered. Yes, especially in the App Store, there are tons of success stories, but for every one that succeeds there are many that don’t.

Perhaps then it is in the value of a closed ecosystem for the company. Designing both the hardware and software allows them complete control over how the phone interacts with the OS. They have seem Apple’s success with this; the opportunities for in-app advertising as well as product tie-ins are quite attractive. And if the Bada platform can be expanded to work on tablets, microwaves, printers… the opportunities are seemingly endless.

But there are also tons of ways to fail here. Without robust first-party capabilities, Bada doesn’t stand a chance of luring people away from the Apple monster. Without extensive HTML5 support or a deep app store, why pay $99 for a Samsung Wave when the 8GB iPhone 3GS is the same price with the same carrier.

The hardware on the Wave seems good. 3″ Super AMOLED 800×480 screen, 1GHZ Hummingbird processor, 5MP camera, WiFi, GPS. But good specs are no longer good enough to take people away from what they know.

And Rogers, pricing the device at $99, is positioning it in the smartphone category. Not smart. I will reserve final judgment, however, until I have used the device, and you can expect a review here soon.

For more info, check out Rogers’ site: Samsung Wave