Check this out, via Brian Ford, from Samsung's AV Product Manager Chris Moseley:
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.
He's dismissing potential competition from Apple's rumored iTV television. For his sake, I hope it's just the necessary marketing bluster to keep confidence high in Samsung's stock in the face of potential stiff competition. Because if it's not trash talking, and Samsung truly sees no potential threat, that could be big trouble for them. First, even if Samsung is winning in the picture quality department, it doesn't seem implausible to imagine a company with Apple's resources (that is, more cash in the bank than any other high tech company, bar none) could close that gap with terrifying speed. For all we know, they've spent the last year doing nothing but, before even releasing their rumored killer TV product.
But more importantly, though, this kind of attitude betrays an astonishing lack of vision. It's this idea that because picture quality (as he asserts) is all that matters now, it's all that ever will matter—that there's nothing new under the sun and that we're at the end of history in that particular high tech category.
Ford compares such hubris to the remarkably similar way Ed Colligan, Palm's CEO at the time dismissed Apple's prospects in the phone business. And compare it to the legions of people—journalists, competitors and regular folk alike—who dismissed the iPad as a sure-fire flop. They did so mostly on the grounds of technical specs and features. One could have summed up their reaction with the following quote:
Mobile computers are ultimately about specs and features. Ultimately. How intuitive or "delightful" they are...great, but let's face it that's a secondary consideration. The ultimate is about how much RAM you have, what your processor speed is, and whether you've got USB ports. And there is no way that anyone, new or old, can come along this year or next year and beat us on those kinds of features and specs.
As everyone eventually discovered, Apple didn't have to.