Samsung downplays iTV threat

Samsung likes to consider itself the king of smart TV right now, so it has the most to lose if Apple redefines that growing market segment.

But it isn’t concerned. Or at the very least, it isn’t showing that it’s concerned. In a recent interview with Pocket-lint.com, Samsung AV product manager Chris Moseley played it cool and said Apple has a long road ahead if it wants to compete.

“We’ve not seen what they’ve done but what we can say is that they don’t have 10,000 people in R&D in the vision category,” Moseley said. His talking point was that Apple doesn’t have a lot of experience in the market of TV display technology.

Going from the iPod to the iPhone, for example, may not have been a huge leap. A computer company that decides to make smartphones can transfer over a lot of their skills. But, Moseley says, the TV market is a very different animal and even if Apple can integrate neat features, consumers will ultimately care about picture quality.

The “smart” aspect of smart TV is “great,” he said, but “let’s face it … that’s a secondary consideration. The ultimate is about picture quality and there is no way that anyone, new or old, can come along this year or next year and beat us on picture quality.”

He brings up a very salient point about Apple really knowing its stuff when it comes to product integration, but TV is a market the company has never seriously dabbled in before.