At London's Vinopolis today, Samsung laid out the launch plans for its bada smartphone platform including some details about the first handset to support the service.

Bada will come first to Samsung's mid-range segment, with the initial devices due out in Asia and Europe during the first half of 2010.

And while there aren't specific details, let alone images, we do know they will feature bada's standards such as 3G/wi-fi, GPS, motion sensors, WVGA screen and multipoint touch.

One of the reasons behind this new approach is ensuring such common features will cut down on fragmentation and porting issues for developers, while the software and services side of the bada platform will enable better customisation for operators and usability for owners.

The other thing we can predict about bada phones is there will be a lot of them.

Samsung announced it sold 40 million touchscreen phones in 2009 and confidently predicts a sizeable increase on that during 2010.