Samsung vs. iTunes: We, Um, Didn’t Mean It!

By Geoff Duncan Published November 3, 2005

The president of Samsung‘s digital media business, Choi Ji-sung, told reporters on Thursday that Samsung, Korea’s largest maker of digital products, in fact has no plans to enter the online music business and compete with Apple’s market-leading iTunes Music Store. Choi’s statements contradict comments he made to Korean newspaper Choson Ilbo on October 28, and which were subsequently confirmed by Samsung spokespersons.

Choi claimed Korean reporters misunderstood his comments last week. “We’re not interested in the online music services market but we plan to offer technical support to our partners to make their services easier and fancier and that would increase our hardware sales,” Choi told reporters after a meeting with analysts Thursday. Samsung’s digital music partners include Microsoft, Yahoo Music, and Napster.

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Samsung is not the only company struggling against Apple’s iPod/iTunes juggernaut: to date heavy-hitters Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL have yet to put a significant dent in Apple’s digital music market dominance. For instance, Samsung’s ambitious goal is to triple sales of its portable music players to over 5 million units in 2005. In comparison, Apple Computer shipped nearly 6.5 million iPods in its most recently completed fiscal quarter.

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Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

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