Apple iTV Already Indirectly Mocked by Samsung

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After fighting Apple in stores and in courts for supremacy in the mobile business – Samsung is certainly losing so far the tablet battle and most legal skirmishes and it’s having a hard time to come up with an iPhone-like flagship device – the South Korean company is about to compete against the iOS device maker in a different niche, the TV business, or better said the Smart TV business.

Apple has been rumored for quite a while now to be working on a brand new product, an Apple iTV that would revolutionize the TV business. The device will run an iOS version of some sort, offering users on-demand access to a large collection of movies and TV shows from Apple’s iTunes digital store alongside a plethora of iOS apps that will certainly be able to run on such a device. Apple is also reported to be in talks with various content providers to negotiate special digital content for its future iTV, although nothing is official about the product. For all we know the device may not even hit stores this year.

But Samsung is already scared of the potential competition coming from Apple in the TV business. Without even having a product, Apple is rumored to make no less than $17 billion in revenue in its first year in the TV business, and considering the success of all its previous iOS devices, I wouldn’t be surprised if an Apple TV chewed away more and more market share year after year. And Samsung would be one of the potential losers of market share in the TV business.

While the South Korean company has not mentioned Apple directly as a potential competitor in this particular business, it certainly took a few indirect hits at Apple recently. Samsung AV product manager Chris Mosely seems to be confident in Samsung’s TV business.

“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,” he said.

“They don’t have the best scaling engine in the world and they don’t have world renowned picture quality that has been awarded more than anyone else.

“TVs are ultimately about picture quality. Ultimately. How smart they are…great, 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.

“So, from that perspective, it’s not a great concern but it remains to be seen what they’re going to come out with, if anything.”

Well, Mosely should take another look at Apple products. Not only does the company build very well-designed devices, but they’re more than functional from the moment they’re turned on. By combining simplicity with a great design, by controlling the hardware and the software side of the business, Apple managed to become a company that’s making more money than Microsoft and Google combined. And that’s huge for a company that was considered virtually dead less than two decades ago.

When Apple will launch an Apple TV, not only will it come with great picture quality, which is what Samsung seems to be focused on right now, but it will pack a smart iOS-based nucleus, that will simply make consumers happy. And with over 315 million iOS devices at large, chances are that some of those iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users will want to pair their smart devices with another smart device, a Smart TV made by Apple.

Speaking about Smart TVs, Samsung seems to be forgetting the fact that some of its most recent TV sets are Smart TVs, ready to offer users features that go well beyond picture quality. But are those features ready to match, or surpass what Apple is going to offer?

What do you say, HDTV buyers, are you getting yourselves an Apple TV later this year – naturally, in case the company launches one?