
Samsung exec: Apple’s ‘iTV’ is nothing to worry about - kemper
http://www.bgr.com/2012/02/14/samsung-exec-apples-itv-is-nothing-to-worry-about/
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andrewthornton
I couldn't help but be reminded of this video from Steve Ballmer talking about
the iPhone.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U>

IMO it is a bad idea to /not worry/ about apple hedging into your vertical.

~~~
g9a5
As Brian Ford pointed out, this is far more reminiscent of Palm's bravado
before iPhone in 2007:

[http://brianford.newsvine.com/_news/2012/02/13/10398704-sams...](http://brianford.newsvine.com/_news/2012/02/13/10398704-samsung-
doesnt-think-apple-can-compete-in-the-tv-market-that-sounds-vaguely-familiar)

> Responding to questions from New York Times correspondent John Markoff at a
> Churchill Club breakfast gathering Thursday morning, Colligan laughed off
> the idea that any company — including the wildly popular Apple Computer —
> could easily win customers in the finicky smart-phone sector.

> “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a
> decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out.
> They’re not going to just walk in.”

But, really, what does anyone expect incumbents to say? They know that they
can't compete with Apple on the ecosystem. They know that they can compete
with Apple on the quality of the picture, because that's the part that they
will likely be supplying to Apple anyway. It's clever to try to shape the
direction of the discourse away from the stuff Apple will be trying to compete
on and back to what Samsung try to compete on.

~~~
Duff
Two things differ from pre-iPhone Palm.

Apple has an established track record of not getting what people want from a
TV. Ala carte TV shows and a crippled set-top box is not very inspiring.

Palm wasn't exactly a superstar before the iPhone's launch. I had a Treo...
the only thing that could be said about it was that the crappy web browser was
better than BlackBerry's crappier one.

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yequalsx
I think Apple's strategy is to provide the best user experience. Clearly they
don't always succeed in this but this is their focus. And they have shown over
and over again that they can deliver a very good user experience without using
the latest and greatest hardware.

Their goal is to provide this with commodity hardware where possible. Every
other manufacturer thinks the goal is having the greatest hardware instead of
the greatest user experience. Samsung should be worried if Apple does indeed
enter the TV market.

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Zirro
Few of Apples products have the latest, best hardware in them. Yet they sell
very well, and are extremely profitable. This situation reminds me a lot of
when Steve Ballmer laughed at the iPhone.

I'm not saying that Apple will deliver the best display, but I also know they
will not deliver one that can be considered even remotely close to bad. With
all the potential an Apple TV has, with the iOS-ecosystem, with Siri-voice
control, streaming media from your Macs (the list goes on), I'd be very scared
if I were Samsung.

~~~
huggyface
_Few of Apples products have the latest, best hardware in them._

Whenever Apple launches a new product, they do generally have the latest, best
hardware in them. The "everyone else is chasing specs" argument seems to
appear a bit later in the product cycle when competitors have jumped ahead.

 _With all the potential an Apple TV has, with the iOS-ecosystem, with Siri-
voice control, streaming media from your Macs (the list goes on), I'd be very
scared if I were Samsung._

I have a Samsung TV. My smartphone acts as a remote with a cute little app. I
can "throw" pictures, videos, and music to it. I can't run Android apps on it,
but it is one of their "Smart" models with a bunch of apps on it.

I use zero of that functionality. Instead I just use the on and off button and
the functionality of my cable box. If Apple thinks they're going to disrupt
the content business, har de har har.

Sidenote -- my cable box is from Motorola, which is now Google. So Google just
reentered the TV business in a very, very big way (after the rather dismal
failure that was Google TV).

~~~
Turing_Machine
"If Apple thinks they're going to disrupt the content business, har de har
har."

Well, the record companies aren't laughing any more.

~~~
huggyface
Did Apple disrupt the music industry in any meaningful way? Digital music
could be bought before Apple, including without DRM, so I would say no. That
they're a retailer is like saying 7-11 disrupted the candy bar industry.

Everyone wants to get in the content chain business because you can try to
essentially monetize other people's content. Only in the television arena the
creators are very aware of such mechanisms, they already have an avenue to the
consumer, so they vigorously fight against "disruptions". Google quickly
discovered that with Google TV.

~~~
Turing_Machine
"Digital music could be bought before Apple, including without DRM, so I would
say no."

I would say yes.

Apple owns over 70% of the music download market. Before iTunes, download
sales were a minuscule fraction of physical CDs sales. They're now larger.
Basically, around 35% of _all music sales_ now go through Apple.

Retailers with that kind of market share have serious clout.

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joejohnson
First, I doubt the iTV will be an actual television, it will probably be a
set-top box like the current TV. Maybe it will obviate the need for a cable
box. Television screen are a low-profit margin business, and people don't want
to upgrade to frequently. More info here:
[http://www.torontostandard.com/technology/why-apples-itv-
won...](http://www.torontostandard.com/technology/why-apples-itv-wont-be-a-tv-
but-will-still-be-huge)

Second, I think this article is dead wrong. Consumers will care more about a
TV being "smart" and having nice functionality, not how crisp or large the
pictures is like Samsung claims. Any modern TV is nice enough that
manufacturers need to compete on other features, like the accessibility of
content. While there is a lot of content available over the internet now
(legally and otherwise), viewing it is never painless, and this can be made
easier. This is a space ripe for disruption and Samsung is apparently burying
their head in the sand.

~~~
chollida1
> Television screen are a low-profit margin business, and people don't want to
> upgrade to frequently.

The same can be said of PC's. Apple came in and changed that.

~~~
joejohnson
I believe that screen manufacturers flooding the market has brought the profit
margins on TV's down to about 10-15%

[http://smallbusiness.chron.com/average-profit-margin-
televis...](http://smallbusiness.chron.com/average-profit-margin-
televisions-34457.html)

However, Apple's business model - at least for iPod/iPhone, maybe MacBooks -
has been to make a decent profit on hardware (estimates as high as 30%), and
to incentivize the higher price with peripherals, such as a large support
network, good compatibility and a plethora of apps.

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9999
Swapping out bullshit about how the iTV will fail, with bullshit about how the
iPhone would fail. So familiar...

”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 cellular reception category,” Moseley said. “They
don’t have the best baseband firmware in the world and they don’t have world
renowned call quality that has been awarded more than anyone else.” Read on
for more.

“Phones are ultimately about voice and call quality. Ultimately. How smart
they are…great, but let’s face it that’s a secondary consideration. The
ultimate is about call quality and there is no way that anyone, new or old,
can come along this year or next year and beat us on call quality,” Moseley
told Pocket-lint. “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.”

------
mikeryan
Assume for a second he's right, that picture quality is the current primary
factor in purchasing a TV (I disagree but thats not the point here).

What Apple has always been able to do is change "what is important" in
consumers minds (a phone isn't just for calls, its for apps) - and thats what
Samsung needs to be afraid of.

~~~
apaprocki
My prediction is that exactly this will happen. Of course TVs will get apps,
etc that come with iOS territory. The real game changer will be the remote. No
TV manufacturer really cares about the remote. They have been following the
same formula for as long as remotes have existed. If my guess is correct about
Apple, a year from now TVs will be judged by their remote "experience" and not
their picture quality. It will be an amazing shift to watch.

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ams6110
If TV is "ultimately about picture quality" then BetaMax would have won out
over VHS in the VCR wars. Instead, consumers sacrificed a little picture
quality for larger recording capacity. And if it comes down to convenience and
usability, Samsung should be plenty scared of Apple.

~~~
onemoreact
What killed Bata was Sony's licencing issues not the format it's self.

~~~
danilocampos
You may be thinking of Minidisc. Recording time was a principal issue in the
tape wars – Betamax could do 60 minutes per tape while VHS variants were good
for 120 to 240 minutes. Hollywood movies couldn't fit on a Beta tape.

------
nathanwdavis
"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market
share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money.
But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd
prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have
2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get."

-Steve Ballmer, 2007

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alduler
I don't wanna bring up Steve Ballmer here.

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huggyface
Are people on here aware that Apple already makes Apple TV? By many of the
comments I have to guess no, given that many seem to miss that Apple has
already demonstrated what intelligence and ease of use they bring to TVs.

The TV industry is a massive, hyper-competitive industry with _extremely_
tight margins (I can buy a good quality 46" LED 1080p smart TV for less than
the price of an iPhone 4S). TVs have -- by design -- tried to focus on the
display side, leaving the content side to whatever myriad of boxes you have
pushing content to it, and that's how customers differentiate.

I don't see Apple being successful at TVs at all, or even why they would want
to be beyond what they offer with Apple TV.

~~~
r00fus
> I don't see Apple being successful at TVs at all, or even why they would
> want to be beyond what they offer with Apple TV.

Apple could bring _a lot_ to the TV watching experience. My current setup...
sucks. I have 4 "content" boxes multiplexed by a receiver and an ill-setup
sound system that, honestly, I've never bothered to fix simply because my
family doesn't watch TV that often.

I pay for several services which we only use lightly.

If Apple came out with a dead-simple setup that solved the mild-moderate TV
usage case (ie, for example, integrated with a cable/ISP provider) that
improved on the quality and integration between the content and the screen,
they wouldn't be able to keep the screens on the shelf.

This would require as much human-factors innovation as it would payment/cost
innovation.

Everyone knows UX is where Apple excels, but pricing/cost is another area
where Apple has heavily innovated

Two cases - prior to the iPhone, getting mobile data was a $45/mo charge for
my Treo - for limited data! - I actually saved money and increased my mobile
data utility by getting the orig iPhone. Also, prior to the iPad the concept
of seamless on-demand prepaid mobile data was simply unrealized and to many,
unfathomable. The iPad succeeded on this factor as much as the device itself.

Apple has a big hill to climb, but they're proven the can do the unthinkable
before. Don't count them out yet.

