One takeaway from this year’s Samsung-Apple legal saga is that the Korean manufacturer, the world’s biggest cellphone maker by volume, wants the work it’s put into design taken seriously. But in an interview with MIT Technology Review, the company’s chief strategy officer Young Sohn is upfront about how far the company has to go to catch up with the competition in Cupertino.

After disclosing that he uses Apple products at home (a Mac, iPhone, and iPad), Sohn is effusive about the company's software and service ecosystem. Emphasizing how many of consumers’ devices, including TVs and displays, are made by Samsung, he criticizes his company’s experiences for being "device-centric," unlike Apple devices, which he praises for services like iCloud. To help close the perceived gap, Samsung is hoping to pick up mobile ecosystem technologies and other pieces of the puzzle in Silicon Valley, where Sohn will head up a 2,000 person staff at the company's two new R&D buildings and ex-Aoler David Eun runs a startup accelerator.