Samsung: the TV becomes smarter and more proactive, interview with Alessio Cazzaniga (Head of Marketing & Retail AV)

The living room of Italians stands at the crossroads of a very significant transformation. Televisions are no longer passive terminals dedicated solely to receiving signals via cable, but sophisticated control centers where entertainment, home automation, and, progressively, commercial interactions converge.

On the occasion of the 2026 Samsung lineup launch, we explored the state of the Italian audiovisual market with an interview with Alessio Cazzaniga, Head of Marketing & Retail AV at Samsung Electronics Italia.

The discussion allowed us to discuss a sector moving toward total integration of software, hardware, and artificial intelligence, within a highly competitive landscape where defending the premium segment requires innovative strategies and meticulous attention to the real needs of viewers.

The living room of Italians is changing and Samsung wants to be at the forefront

The digital market in Italy has surpassed the threshold of 84 billion euros, an expansion that directly reflects in everyday consumer habits.

Recent data show a viewing time rising to nearly 22 hours per week per person, signaling the entry into an era where fragmentation of platforms represents the main challenge for companies in the sector.

Italian viewers typically juggle between five different streaming apps, returning to the home screen dozens of times a day to navigate endless catalogs. The screen thus assumes an essential filtering role, seeking to curb the user’s decision fatigue.

At the same time, emerging Asian brands press on the mid-range segments with tight pricing policies, making competition in large formats a challenge that goes beyond the mere specifications of a single panel. Defending market share means raising the level of service offered, aiming at an ecosystem able to hold attention through a frictionless user experience.

The road has two lanes: between OLED and Micro RGB

The brand’s proposal for 2026 unfolds in two distinct directions. Rather than imposing a single standard, the company builds a dual technological path designed to meet vastly different environments.

On one side, OLED displays advance with minimal thickness and refresh rates pushed up to 165 Hz, appealing to gamers and integrating into living spaces with minimalistic design.

On the other hand, Micro RGB technology scales to imposing sizes, reaching diagonals up to 130 inches and guaranteeing absolute color fidelity.

One of the innovations accompanying the entire new generation is the anti-reflective chemical treatment Glare Free 3.0, developed specifically to limit glare in rooms well lit by natural light.

The living room as the intelligent hub of the connected home

Pure hardware, however, represents only part of the overall offering. Today’s TV positions itself as the proactive orchestrator of the smart home, relying on advanced software models like Vision AI Companion.

Interaction through voice commands abandons simple execution of basic commands to offer contextual assistance, capable of interpreting requests based on the family’s habits.

This computing capability extends to energy management, with logic that coordinates the loads of connected appliances on the SmartThings network, aiming at a reduction of consumption that can reach up to 75% in prolonged idle situations.

The interview with Alessio Cazzaniga

Luca Zaninello: Samsung celebrates twenty years of uninterrupted global leadership in the TV market. However, looking at the Italian market, we are witnessing extremely aggressive pressure from Asian competitors, now expanding even into premium formats. What is Samsung Electronics Italia’s strategy to defend its value-based shares and keep the brand’s exclusivity intact, without giving in to the logic of the price war?

Alessio Cazzaniga: Twenty years of leadership certainly represent an important milestone, but above all a responsibility. In a market like Italy, where competition is increasingly dynamic and the consumer is highly informed, we believe brand value is built over time, not through price.

Today choosing a TV goes far beyond technical specifications. People look for products that offer image quality, design, reliability, and an experience capable of evolving over the years. This is what we continue to invest in.

Artificial intelligence is a concrete example of this evolution. For us it is not a feature to add to a product, but a technology that works in the background to make using the TV increasingly natural, adapting to content, environment and people’s preferences.

Alongside innovation, we continue to invest in what contributes to building long-term trust: software updates, security through Samsung Knox, and an open and connected ecosystem. It is this combination of elements that allows us to continue to compete by creating value, rather than chasing a price-based logic.

LZ: Taking a recent stock, how are things for the brand in our country? Which segments or consumption trends have given you the most satisfaction in the last year and where do you see the widest growth margins for 2026?

The Italian TV market is undergoing a transformation: on one hand there remains a strong focus on value and convenience, on the other we see a growing willingness to invest when the consumer perceives a real qualitative leap in the experience.

We are observing increasing interest in premium segments and large formats, confirming an important evolution: the TV is increasingly considered not just a technical device but a central element of the home environment, capable of combining entertainment, design and connectivity.

Among the most interesting trends are certainly the growth of interest in OLED and Neo QLED, together with the spread of larger diagonals, favored by the evolution of streaming, gaming and home sports content consumption. Parallelly, attention to the ecosystem grows: the consumer increasingly evaluates the TV’s ability to talk to other devices in the home.

Looking at the second half of 2026, we believe AI will be one of the main factors of evolution. The real opportunity will be to transform increasingly advanced technologies into immediately perceivable benefits: real-time image optimization, more engaging audio, easier content discovery, and a TV capable of adapting to context and the person’s needs. Growth will therefore come from the ability to combine technological innovation and ease of use, creating value that goes far beyond the mere technical specifications.

LZ: The 2026 lineup presents a fascinating top-level dichotomy: OLED at the forefront on one side, Micro RGB positioned as the ultimate pinnacle of innovation on the other. How do you communicate this coexistence to the Italian consumer? Can we say these are not competing technologies, but solutions designed for two radically different “living room” concepts?

We do not see OLED and Micro RGB as competing technologies, but as two complementary interpretations of our vision for home entertainment. The goal is not to propose a single “best” technology but to offer the solution best suited to different people’s needs.

OLED continues to be an ideal choice for those seeking a cinema-quality experience, with deep blacks, high contrast, and refined design. Micro RGB represents a new chapter in display evolution, pushing research further, color accuracy, brightness, and image quality, especially in large formats.

More than choosing a technology, today the consumer chooses the type of experience they want to live in their own home. Each environment and each viewing style are different, and our task is to offer a complete and coherent range, in which each technology has its own identity and a clearly defined role.

LZ: The race for huge diagonals inevitably clashes with urban layouts and average home sizes in Italy. Is there a physiological limit beyond which delivery and installation challenges outweigh the desire for immersion? (in short: is there data showing customers choosing smaller diagonals because the TV “doesn’t pass through the door” or “I can’t carry it / it won’t fit in the apartment”?)

In Italy the growth of large formats is a global trend, but the diagonal choice remains strongly linked to the house’s characteristics and usage habits.

In Italy there naturally exists greater attention to space than in other markets, and this leads the consumer to evaluate not only screen size but also the relationship between viewing distance, environment, and the integration of the TV within the home.

More than logistical constraints, we observe that the choice is guided by the search for the right balance between immersion and living context. For this reason, our approach is not simply to propose ever larger screens, but to guide the consumer toward the format best suited to their needs.

Moreover, technologies like AI and continual improvements in image quality make it possible today to enjoy highly engaging experiences even on diagonals that a few years ago would have been considered more modest. The future will not necessarily be only “bigger,” but increasingly “tailored” to spaces and people’s needs.

LZ: Research indicates that we have entered the era of “Streamcasting,” where users rely on the home screen to navigate the fragmentation of on-demand content. In this scenario where attention is the real currency, how does the role of Tizen OS evolve?

In recent years the way we experience the TV has changed profoundly. Today the TV is no longer just a screen to access content, but a true gateway to home entertainment.

In this context the role of the operating system becomes increasingly central. The challenge is not simply to offer a greater amount of content, but to help people quickly find those most relevant, reducing the complexity generated by the multiplicity of platforms.

Tizen OS evolves precisely in this direction, becoming a smarter, safer, and more integrated platform, capable of linking content, services and devices in the Samsung ecosystem. Thanks to AI, interaction becomes progressively more natural and contextual: the goal is not to replace user choice, but to simplify it.

In this evolution the TV becomes increasingly a true Entertainment Companion, able to adapt to the person’s preferences and accompany them in discovering content in an intuitive way, transforming technology into an ever more natural experience.

LZ: The phenomenon of ad-supported free channels (FAST) has exploded. Samsung TV Plus was born as a loyalty tool: is it becoming a real, independent and strategic profit center within the Italian division’s budget?

Samsung TV Plus was born primarily with the objective of enriching the user experience, offering simple and immediate access to a wide range of content without requiring additional subscriptions. In recent years the FAST model has gained an increasingly relevant role because it responds to a concrete need: in an increasingly fragmented landscape, many users seek immediate, free, and easily accessible viewing options.

For us the value of Samsung TV Plus should be read within a broader vision. Today the TV is no longer just a hardware product, but a platform that continues to evolve over time thanks to content and services. Samsung TV Plus contributes precisely to this: it increases the value of the overall experience and strengthens the relationship with the consumer even after purchase.

The market of content and advertising is evolving rapidly and certainly represents a strategic area, but our goal remains to offer an increasingly relevant service for both users and partners, confirming the TV’s role as an access point to an ever richer entertainment ecosystem.

LZ: The domestic sports experience is replacing viewing in public venues, aided by the need for extremely high visual and audio fidelity. How do specific features like AI Football Mode intercept this return to “home sociability”?

Sport has always had a strong social dimension and this has not changed. What is evolving is how people experience this. More and more, the living room becomes the place to share a match with friends and family, with increasingly high expectations for viewing quality.

Today it’s no longer enough to see a match well: the consumer expects fluid images, more defined details, and audio capable of conveying the atmosphere of the event. It is precisely here that AI can make a difference.

Features like AI Football Mode automatically recognize sports content and optimize image and sound in real time, improving action fluency, detail rendering, and overall engagement. The user does not need to adjust any settings: the TV adapts automatically to the content.

The goal is not to replicate the stadium, but to make an already engaging moment even more captivating, as it remains, above all, an experience to be lived together. Technology works discreetly, leaving room for emotions.

LZ: AI often risks being a marketing label. With the new Vision AI Companion you promise an assistant with real contextual intelligence. What will be everyday use cases in which Italian users will concretely perceive this leap compared to traditional voice commands?

The real difference is the shift from a command-based interaction to a much more natural and contextual experience.

Until now we were used to asking the TV to perform a specific action. With Vision AI Companion the paradigm changes: the system is designed to understand context better and offer smarter support, without requiring continuous interaction.

This means, for example, receiving more relevant content suggestions, obtaining contextual information about what you are watching, or benefiting from automatic image and audio adjustments based on the environment and content type. The AI works quietly in the background to improve the experience, without becoming the center of attention.

We believe the true value of AI does not lie in a single function, but in the ability to make every interaction simpler. The moment you notice AI less is often when it is working best.

LZ: The TV is set to act as a central hub for the smart home via SmartThings. Beyond installation numbers, what is today the rate of real active use of these features in Italy? Are families actually governing the home from the living room screen?

The path to a connected home is still evolving, but the direction is very clear: technology must become ever easier to use.

The TV occupies a unique position in the home, because it is a shared device present in the daily life of the whole family. For this reason it can become the most natural access point to interact with the SmartThings ecosystem.

Today the value lies not so much in controlling every single device from the living room, but in being able to instantly access truly useful information: check the status of appliances, receive contextual notifications, or quickly manage some automations without changing devices.

The objective is to make the smart home work increasingly proactively, reducing complexity rather than increasing it.

LZ: As the TV aggregates security streams, cameras, habits, and payments, it becomes the most sensitive node in the home network. How are you reassuring an audience that protects their smartphone but often undervalues the vulnerabilities of the living room?

The more the home becomes connected, the more security becomes central. Therefore we believe protection should not be an added element, but a component designed from the ground up.

Samsung integrates the Samsung Knox platform into its devices and, increasingly, an approach based on protecting the entire ecosystem. With Knox Matrix, for example, security is not about a single device, but the network of connected products that can monitor each other and help protect the entire home experience.

At the same time we believe it is important to continue to educate users. Today security is not only about smartphones and PCs, but all devices connected to the home network, including the TV.

Trust is a fundamental element, especially for products destined to stay in homes for many years. That’s why we continue to invest in hardware and software security and in updates over time, so that innovation always goes hand in hand with data protection and privacy.

LZ: We know AI enables optimized energy management of the entire home ecosystem. How do you communicate this invisible but fundamental ROI in-store?

This is one of the most interesting challenges we have today. If a few years ago it was enough to explain a technical feature, today we must tell a benefit that is often not immediately visible.

Energy efficiency is a perfect example. It is a concrete value, but the consumer rarely perceives it by looking at a product on a shelf. This is why the store’s role becomes even more important.

Our objective is to move the conversation from technical specifications to use cases. Through SmartThings and AI Energy Mode, for example, you can monitor consumption, receive tips to optimize it, and have greater control over home energy management.

When these examples are explained simply, the value of AI becomes immediately understandable. That’s why we continue to invest in training the sales network. Today explaining AI means mainly explaining how it can improve everyday life.

LZ: One of the historic limits of TVs in Italian living rooms is the management of natural light. The introduction of Glare Free 3.0 arises from specific observation of our domestic environments. How does this change the freedom of positioning the TV inside homes?

Image quality is not determined solely by the panel, but also by the environment where the TV is used. It is an aspect often underestimated, but which in everyday life makes a big difference.

In Italy many homes feature very bright spaces, large windows and areas where it’s not always possible to place the TV in the ideal condition. Reducing reflections thus means increasing design freedom within the home.

With Glare Free we are working precisely in this direction. The goal is not simply to improve a technical performance, but to allow people to enjoy image quality at any time of day, without having to modify the environment or adjust their habits, which is why we have applied this technology not only to the OLED family, but also to Micro RGB and The Frame.

I believe this is the direction of innovation: technologies that adapt to people, not the other way around.

LZ: As Head of Retail AV, you know that explaining 4K resolution was intuitive, while neural-network-based upscaling is more abstract. How are you redesigning training for sales staff in the Italian retail sector to convey the real value of AI?

Yes, today communicating innovation has become more complex.

The shift to 4K was immediately perceptible. Today many of the most important innovations work behind the scenes. AI continuously improves image, sound and interaction, but often the user doesn’t even realize it’s intervening.
Therefore the role of the sales assistant is also evolving. Today it’s not enough to know the technical specifications of a product: you must translate them into concrete situations.

It’s much more effective to show how the TV automatically improves a piece of content, adapts to the room’s light, or optimizes the sound based on what we’re watching, rather than describing how an algorithm works.

In the end, people buy a benefit, not a technology. And this is exactly how we are rethinking the training of our retail network.

LZ: We have seen Samsung innovate at physical stores with the “Conversational Signage”, using AI and sensors to deliver hyper-profiled messages. Considering the strength of your Samsung Ads platform and the proactive intelligence of the new Vision AI Companion in living rooms, I ask: is there a roadmap where the home TV will borrow these B2B logics to become a true e-commerce terminal? In short, are we heading toward the era of the “Shoppable TV” where the user could interact with AI to complete purchases directly from the couch, eliminating the last boundary between entertainment, advertising and final transaction?

The convergence between content, services and AI is opening up very interesting scenarios, and it’s natural that the TV’s role continues to evolve.

That said, I think it’s important to start from a principle. The objective is not to turn TV into a sales tool, but to make it an interface that is increasingly useful, simple and natural.

AI will certainly help people discover content, services or information in ever more relevant ways, but every evolution must continue to place user control, transparency and privacy protection at the center.

Rather than imagining a future where TV becomes a commercial channel, I prefer to think of an experience where technology can remove complexity and make interacting with digital services more immediate. This is the direction we believe AI can create the greatest value.