Cupertino, California-based tech giant Apple is on the cusp of taking the smartwatch market by storm Friday with the debut of its much-hyped Apple Watch. But rather than feeling sorry for itself, a top Samsung executive has told CNBC that the South Korean tech giant is "delighted" that a major rival has joined a market into which it has already made inroads.
"Great competitors offer great things to consumers and the fact that there are so many great competitors in this space mean that there is absolutely a market. I mean, that's what it tells you," Rory O'Neill, the vice-president for mobile Europe at Samsung, which launches its S6 smartphone Friday, told CNBC.
"It's with great delight that Apple has followed us into that market."
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The South Korean technology firm launched its first product in the smartwatch space in September 2013 at IFA in Germany. Despite poor reviews at the time, Samsung has built on that product and has now five models in the European smartwatch market, according to O'Neill.
"We've over 70 percent market share of the smart watch market in Europe and we can learn from those early iterations of our product," he said.
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But like the tablet market a few years ago, many tech experts are predicting that the space will only start to gather pace with the entrance of Apple with pre orders for its Apple Watch available from Friday.
As well as entering a new tech market, companies like Apple and Saumung will be venturing into the realms of the luxury market and taking on watchmakers like Tag Heuer.
On the same day, Samsung is trying to steal a little of the limelight with the launch of the Galaxy S6 smartphone on the back of an earnings report this week that was slightly better than expected despite a 31 percent profit drop on a year-on year basis.
Samsung has traditionally operated in the low-end, mid-range and high-end markets and the S6 is targeted at the latter, according to O'Neill.
"We chose the operating system that delights consumers for the right products," he said.
He said that Samsung was currently investing $40 million a day to invent new products and new services and was confident that the competition would only be positive for the end consumer.
"I's great for consumers that you've got all these brands investing hundreds of millions of billions of dollars to create new services for them on their mobile products," he said.
"There's many great brands in the mobile industry you've got obviously Apple, Samsung, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and many others."