Samsung buried by Apple by 2016

They should've given him the boot just from that interview alone. What a jackass.

If you were Samsung, and you were nervous, you probably wouldn't want to mention being nervous in a press release.

I just don't see how Apple gets into the TV market. 40-42" sets (which is what they have rumored to build) are simply too small for most people now. They're fine for a bedroom, but I don't know anyone who wants anything less than 47". And all the growth in TV's are in the 50+ range.

Samsung also isn't too concerned about Apple getting into the TV market. You know why. Who's going to make the panel that powers the TV? Probably Samsung. Samsung makes a lot of parts that are in the iPhone (including the processor and flash memory).

*has 32 inches of TV* *feels inadequate* *has complex now*

"Let's see how the competition goes."

AAPL > MSFT + GOOG

Yeah, that worked out well for SteveB.

Well, of course Samsung would say that in public. In private they're probably working on a deal with Microsoft already. And like @4 said, if/when Apple makes a TV it will probably use a Samsung panel, so either way, Samsung wins.

You're right about one thing though: Consumers don't really care about picture quality. They might say they do, if you asked them, but in reality, they don't. Most consumers probably can't even tell the difference between standard definition and HDTV.

Many flat-panel makers are selling at break even or a loss, is what's funny. Only integrated flat-panel/TV maker firms (in which one arm sells the panel to the TV arm) produce a profit, according to the Economist. And even Sony figured out how to lose money making panels and selling TVs.

@Zeusifer

A certain percentage of consumers care about picture quality. They are the ones that bought blu-ray, continue to buy plasmas, and buy local dimming LED backlit LCD's. Another group of people only care about the aesthetics of the TV when it is off. These are the people buying the super thin edge lit LED LCD's. The majority of the consumers though only care about price. That's why Vizio has taken off to such an extreme. And that's why the margins on TV's are so small.

Apple has incredibly high margins on their products. They accomplish this in one of two ways. They either order so many of the same parts that they drive down the cost low enough to have a huge profit margin (this is why the iPhone sells for the same price as a regular Motorola Phone, but has a much bigger margin). Their other method is to simply charge a lot more (this is what they do with their computers).

I don't believe either of those methods are possible with TV's. Samsung is selling something like 30 million TV's a year. I believe Vizio sold somewhere around 10 million just in the US. These numbers include TV's in every size from the low 20 inch ones up to the 60 inch behemoths. I don't see how it would be possible for Apple to sell one or two sizes of TV's and order enough parts to bring the margins down low enough. Samsung is making all of the stuff in house and has enormous efficiencies of scale (they are making panels for many other brands as well) and they can't command really high margins by using them. The only other option for Apple is to just charge more. The best 40-42" Samsung TV is the UN40D6400. You can get it for around $1000 with a list price of $1299. Lets say Apple makes their TV list for $1499 (no discounts on Apple products). For that price I can stroll into any big box store and get a Vizio or LG TV with 3D in a 55" size. The TV is going to have to be pretty magical to make people forgo the bigger screen. In TV's size and price tend to be the most important things.

@5:

Don't get down about it. My 1985-vintage 27-inch Zenith (analog, picture tube) is still chugging along as my living room TV.

Yes, I'm the original owner of a TV that's older than many, probably even most, Sloggers.

The winning comment here is @4. Thread over.

"TVs are ultimately about picture quality."

From a certain perspective, this is actually kinda true. Buyers choose based on the intersection of picture quality and price. But there's a reason for that: there's no differentiation on UI/UX. All of the available options suck equally: from the "big names" (Sony, Samsung, Sharp) to the bottom-feeders (Vizio, all of the random chinese brands stocked at Walmart), setting up a modern HDTV to take advantage of any of the alleged features of HD media (surround sound, internet connectivity, universal remote) is an exercise in pain, suffering, mistranslated manuals and zillion-button remotes.

Is there room here for a new player to make a stand on user experience? You bet your ass there is. Ima make some popcorn, 'cause this is gonna be HIGH-larious.

Go ask somebody, "What is the most memorable Samsung product you've ever used?"

They're just another General Widgets Corp cranking out generic shit at low profit margins. Even if Apple comes in and skims a fat slice of profit off the top, General Widgets Corp will still be there, lumbering along, cranking out most of the generic shit that most people buy, and only making a little money at it. Apple takes the profit share, everybody else takes the market share.

I bet they'll make a kick ass teevee. The price on the other hand...

@Doctor Memory

TV's have no setup. You plug in an HDMI cable and you go. The set up for the surround sound is in a AV Receiver. The setup for content and you DVR is in your cable box or your blu-ray player. The only time I've ever gone into the setup of my TV is to calibrate it (and most people prefer the default torch mode). Most people aren't using any of the internet apps on their TV because they have the same apps somewhere else (xbox, playstation, dvd, blu-ray, wii, roku, apple tv, etc).

The problem with setup to crack isn't necessarily a UI problem with the TV's or even the boxes. TiVo has a pretty good UI. Windows Media Center (what I use for a DVR) has a great UI. The UI problems are with the set top boxes that you get from your cable or satellite provider. Because a Windows Media Center or TiVo (the only two real DVR options) require a huge up front investment of money almost no one uses them. And because the only good way to get content is (and will remain) to sign up for cable, most people are forced to use the shitty interface in their "free" cable box.

The only solution is to work with the cable company and negotiate with them to show their content on your product with your own UI. So far no cable company has agreed to this on any scale (there are small amounts of stuff like this for the xbox). If you can't work around this, you can create a cable card device (like TiVo or Windows Media Center), and get the content that way. But the cable card solution is something Apple would never do.

I don't know if Samsung is right or wrong on this, but I do see one flaw with the Balmer/iPhone analogy--Balmer doesn't know squat about phones, then or now. At least Samsung knows about TVs.

I don't believe that anybody, or hardly anybody, gives a crap about picture quality. Fact: all the major TV brands have equally good picture quality. Fact: even most "experts" can't tell the difference between Samsung, Sony, LG, etc. when the logos are obscured (they can tell that the pictures are DIFFERENT, but not which is which or which is "better"). Fact. The word "better" doesn't mean anything. Fact: most people have sub-optimal picture setups in their homes. Fact: probably half of all HDTVs are showing standard-def content stretched out or even at the wrong aspect ratio. Fact: people watch tons of YouTube with NoDef.

What people want is better programs and a better way to watch them. On my set, I want to watch more football but I cannot because I won't pay Comcast yet another package price for Gol TV, and I spend a ridiculous amount of my time fighting with their spectacularly horrible cable/DVR/In Demand interface. But I haven't switched because I haven't heard an English-language pitch for a solution that's not just easy but obvious to set up. I am not a tech illiterate but I am uninterested in learning a new field just to watch my fucking TV, which is what all the experts (none of whom have any other interests in the world) want me to do.

So, yeah. @13 is right. Gimme something I can plug in, turn on, and navigate around in with a simple menu system based on what I already know about the internet, and I'll buy it.

TV interfaces are in the dark ages. I mean, compare a TV with even the clunkiest web page. Your dog can probably figure out how to work Youtube; there are nuclear physicists who are right this minute sitting in front of their HDTV watching Channel 5 because they don't even know 105 exists.

@16 yes yes yes, I implicitly meant the entire ecosystem around the TV, and judging from the rumor-mill so does Apple. (Although I think you'd be surprised how awful the experience of just getting a random costco/walmart LCD tv to work with a random cable box can be for the average non-technical consumer.)

I like the way that right behind SB's head is the Nortel logo. Remember Nortel? Neither does anybody else.

Most people don't even watch their HDTV on the right ratio.

The iPhone/iPad are awesome, but those are the only truly dominating products Apple that has released (and really, they're pretty much the same product).

Apple can thank MSFT's epic Vista fuck up for the rise in popularity of the Mac.

Apple fanboys aside, if you switch between Windows 7 and Mac OS a lot, it's obvious that the Windows 7 user experience is superior.

Compare Finder to Windows Explorer, for example - Windows Explorer rocks, and Finder is a steaming hunk of shit.

Doesn't help that I have to use Finder to get to my Applications directory just to launch a fucking app. Apple should swallow it's pride and add a fucking Start menu.

And why the fuck are the min/max buttons exactly 1 pixel in size on the Mac? Add a few more fucking pixels, there are plenty to spare.

Maybe Apple will hit another home run with iTV, but I wouldn't assume so based on the just the iPhone alone, especially now that Steve Jobs is out of the picture.

Yeah. The carriers are the real issue. Not the viewing technology. The civil war between the carriers, producers, and distributors basically cripples everything.

We canceled cable a couple of years ago and have been navigating a Frankenstein amalgamation of Netflix, Internet streaming and dvd rentals. Netflix has less streaming content now than they did before. Hulu is a fucking mess. No way am I signing up for cable again and waste $150 a month just to watch maybe 10 hours of decent TV a month. Right now it's a pain in the ass but it's cheap and with a little planning I get to watch what a want when I want.

If Apple can get some sort of reasonable deal to get much wider and RELIABLE content and secure a deal with carriers then I'll consider it.

I'm hearing that fuck tv.

I like his strategy - I like it a lot!!

”There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.” – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, April 30, 2007

”We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” – Former Palm CEO Ed Colligan, November 16, 2006

@18: that's a lot of FACTS you pulled out of your ass.

Display technology has gotten consistently better at lower and lower prices, and continues to improve on all fronts.

Displays absolutely do look (and measure) quite different, and very high-performance displays, while much more affordable than they were in years past, still demand a premium price.

And experts absolutely can tell which display is better when logos are obscured. I know because I do this for a living, and I've measured many many displays. The measurements tell the story, and the measurements don't lie.

If I were Samsung, I would be strategic. Samsung makes some excellent LCD displays. But Apple, while overpriced for their displays, don't put out crud. They use nice displays, and I would expect a quality panel to be used in their TV products.

But flexibility, access to content and quality integration of web, streaming, and other common TV sources (disc, server, sat/broadcast) has never really been accomplished despite many attempts through the decades. If Apple can over the GUI and more importantly some kind of integrated content library like itunes store, they'll have a pretty killer product.