Apple TV doesn't scare Samsung, but it should do

A Samsung exec has said the company isn't scared by rumours that Apple is working on a TV set.

"We've not seen what they've done, but what we can see is that they don't have 10,000 people in R&D in the vision category," Samsung's AV product manager Chris Moseley told Pocket-lint.

Moseley went on to get technical, saying, "They don't have the best scaling engine in the world and they don't have world-renowned picture quality."

Moseley reckons the fight for space in your living room will come down to picture quality. "TVs are ultimately about picture quality," he asserts. "How smart they are... great, but let's face it, that's a secondary consideration."

In other words, Samsung reckons it can out-do Apple in the picture quality stakes, and that will be enough to keep the iPhone-spawning company at bay.

This all sounds rather familiar. As tech-savvy some-time CNET UK writer Stuart Dredge points out on Twitter, Nokia was dismissive of the iPhone when it first came out, saying Apple's smart phone wasn't a threat, and making note of the fact that the first iPhone didn't have 3G.

But if Apple's rise to the top of the tech pile has taught us anything, it's that the majority of folks don't give two hoots about hardware. So if Apple does produce a TV with a fresh design and an iOS-esque interface, I'd be amazed if inferior picture quality stops people from buying them in droves.

I've watched something similar happen with tablets. The Motorola Xoom was supposed to be the first proper iPad rival, boasting a dual-core processor, Flash support and a 5-megapixel camera.

But despite the fact it bested the iPad with a superior spec list, nobody wanted to buy one, and the lures of iOS, big-name apps and a slick design saw people flock to Apple's tablet.

Apple's not breathed a word about its much-rumoured TV set, but if it does produce one, Samsung and other telly manufacturers should look to arm themselves with more than big R&D departments and superior scaling engines.

Smart TVs are very much in their infancy, with only really BBC iPlayer and, arguably, Netflix and Lovefilm as useful services at the moment. Apple's app ecosystem arriving on the scene will be a sharp shock, although it's certainly possible that Google TV can 'do an Android', with the first sets arriving in the UK later this year.

What do you think about Apple? If it does release a TV set, how should other companies react? Let me know in the comments, or over on the Facebook wall.