"The thing to remember is that Meego and the work done primarily by Samsung and LiMo have somewhat the same roots," Sousou said.

LiMo is an important partner in the project because of its operator members, he said. Having the customer and industry input will be important to the development of Tizen, he said.

The Tizen project is structured such that no single entity can control the development or block another company from contributing, Sousou said. He hopes that will encourage participation from companies that may be competitors to Samsung and Intel.

Intel appeared to be holding back some details of Tizen. Asked why a consumer would choose a phone running Tizen instead of Android, iOS or Windows Phone, Sousou said he wasn't prepared to answer that question at the moment but would talk about it in the future. He also declined to say why a handset maker might be interested in Tizen.

One reason phone manufacturers might use Tizen is because it appears that it will be truly open, said Jack Gold, an analyst with J. Gold Associates. He expects Google to start clamping down soon on how much customization handset makers can do with Android. Phone makers such as HTC have developed their own user interfaces for Android, but the additional software seems to have slowed the process of updating phones to the latest versions of the operating system.