LAS VEGAS – The CES 2024, the largest trade fair in the world dedicated to technology and innovation. This year too the event saw among the protagonists Samsung, the South Korean giant that amazed everyone with its transparent MicroLED.
Yet, he tells us Bruno Marnati – VP of Samsung Electronics Italy – that’s not his favorite novelty: “This year we really presented a lot of new things and it would be too easy to tell you the transparent MicroLED. My favorite thing this year is the new Tizen OS interface that we installed on our new televisions. It practically gives the possibility of configure the main menu mode for each person in the family. I have a seven and a half year old little girl at home, you won’t believe it, but every time I go to anything I only see cartoons, cartoons and cartoons. What does this new system do? It can divide people – father, mother, son, daughter – and independently learns what they watch most, but not only in linear TV, putting it first, but also and above all in the VOD part.”
So is this the plus of the now omnipresent artificial intelligence?
For Marnati the advantage is “the enhancement of personalization. We have fallen out of love with many products, and I believe artificial intelligence will help us to make us fall back in love with the experience of using the products. Our televisions, for example, this year have the ability to make dialogues heard that were not heard well before. As? Dividing the voice from the underlying sounds.
Then there are many films shot in SD that can now be seen in 8K resolution. I believe this is the real plus of artificial intelligence: change the point of view of an experience for a particular user.”
Interview with Bruno Marnati, between transparent displays and attention to design
However, let’s put AI aside and talk about what was one of the most talked about innovations of CES 2024: the aforementioned transparent MicroLED.
The advantages offered by this technology, however, are not limited to those evident at first glance, such as the vividness of the images, the brightness and the possibility of playing on transparency: “A transparent television it has a decidedly much lower environmental impact. – explains the VP of Samsung Electronics Italia – The transparent television you have seen is a sheet of crystal with millions of microchips, full stop. It does not have any type of frame, it has no plastic or resin parts. And given that Samsung’s division wants to get to zero emissions by 2030 and Samsung as a whole wants to get to zero emissions by 2050, this could be a first step.”
Despite this, however, Marnati is convinced that the vocation of this innovation is linked to the B2B sector rather than the consumer world, such as hospitals, architecture studios, design studios and shops.
Instead, there is a product announced at CES 2024 that is clearly aimed at the general public: Music Frame. In essence it is a speaker that looks like a small painting.
“The product that I have at home and that my wife allows me to change whenever I want is the Frame, which for me is a total revolution. The Frame TV has changed for me the point of view not only of the television but also of viewing the television inside a home. You save spaces, you remove that black rectangle inside on a wall, on a pedestal.
The Music Frame is the consequent response to a need.
[…] I was talking to a friend of mine two days ago who told me that for example he is a fan of LPs and sticks them on the walls and this could be a new logic: having something electronic that you can customize and that gives extra value. Consider that the Music Frame can be used as a stand alone, therefore like speakers, it can be used in interface with the television, but the maximum, the non plus ultra of quality, you get with the Music Frame, television and soundbar, like us the we define Q-Symphony.”
Despite the success of The Frame, the Smart TV that looks like a painting, Samsung still focuses a lot on classic televisions.
“The population and tastes are, I don’t want to say infinite, but they are many and immense. – explains Bruno Marnati – We move from Ultra HD to Full HD, to 4K, 8K, OLED, OLED in very large sizes but also up to 48 inches. We have monitors that go up to 144 Hz.
The Frame responds to a need of a few people, certainly not of all, because there are people who want a 98 inch, a 110 inch, then there are also those who in their second home want a 32 Full HD so as not to have kind of problems. But QWhat Samsung is focusing on is the user experiencehence our operating system inside our televisions.”
However, the Korean giant also has another ace up its sleeve: “I see many who have brought products and super products but I haven’t seen anyone who is bringing a system and ecosystem like SmartThings, as complex as ours. All the competitors are focusing on, give me the term, mere iron, perhaps even with exceptional solutions. I, on the other hand, am always fascinated by Samsung because iron is certainly important, whether it concerns televisions or telephony or white, but I believe the concept of environment and SmartThings and ecosystem is the winning weapon for Samsung.”
