South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics topped a smartphone sales chart in the first quarter of 2015 in Bangladesh with its budget smartphone, the Z1, according to research data Monday.

A report released by research firm Counterpoint showed that the Z1, running on the Tizen operating system, enjoyed robust sales in the January-March period and was “the No. 1 smartphone model in the entire country.”

The feat came as a surprise, since it was achieved on the home turf of phone-maker Symphony Mobile. 

The Bangladeshi handset-maker held a 36.6 percent market share in mobile phone shipments and a 38 percent share of smartphone shipments in the first quarter. Samsung came second with 7.2 percent in mobile phone shipments and 23.4 percent in smartphone shipments, followed by Walton and Microsoft, which snagged 9.5 percent and 5.4-percent market shares, respectively.

Samsung has recently been pushing to grow the Tizen operating system, which was jointly deployed by the firm’s allies including Intel and NTT Docomo to counter the duopoly of Google’s Android OS and Apple’s iOS in the global smartphone market.

Following the launch of the Z1 in India this January, the budget smartphone was released in Bangladesh in February.

Samsung has reportedly shipped 500,000 units of the Tizen-based handset as of May, and sold 20,000 units in the first week after the launch in Bangladesh.

The company has also been paving the way for the worldwide launch of the Z1 as it has made the Tizen Store, an application market, available for developers and users in 182 countries.

The Tizen-powered handset Z1, however, is still only available in India and Bangladesh.

A market analyst said that “the global launch of the Tizen Store indicated that Samsung would soon release Tizen-powered phones in more global markets.”

Samsung’s latest flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, meanwhile, surpassed a 10 million threshold around a month after their worldwide releases on April 10.

By Kim young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)