The real difference in Samsung and Apple: dollars in ads
You gotta love the twinges of hubris that seem to overtake some of the big media device manufacturers in the face of their continued setbacks against the iPod army (Sim Wong Hoo's bombastic Apple holy-war statements, of course, being the most notable). And we must admit to getting a bit of a chuckle out of Samsung, whose Northa American SVP of Marketing Peter Weedfald (the same gentleman attributed with stating Samsung's officially put the kibosh on a dual-mode HD DVD / Blu-ray player for now), who seemed to try and write off Samsung's lukewarm US digital audio player marketshare to dollars in ads: "What's the difference between how they have gone to market and how we have gone to market? It's real simple. They spent $165 million last year to advertise Apple MP3 products. We spent $1 million." Sure, advertising dollars do help -- and we do think very highly of Samsung's portable audio offerings, that's for sure -- but we've got a sneaking suspicion Samsung's going to have to do a bit more to muscle in on Apple's territory than capture ad space in 2006. After all, look at how much money Creative dumped in advertising in 2005 -- that'd be $100m -- and where that got them. No, we definitely think Samsung has it in 'em to beat out Apple, but in order to do so they're gonna have to really bring it back home and stick to their core: creating excellently designed, quality devices that outclass and outperform Apple's iPod line. A winner wins, right?
