Yes, definitely. It's just that everybody here was expecting Apple to release a New MacBook Pro and, instead, Samsung released completely unrelated products at the same time. But there are some interesting things to note here.
Samsung's offerings are nowhere near the power expected in the 16-inch Pro. However, they have some very interesting features. These laptops are very light (a 15-inch 2-in-1 model with a discrete graphics card is only 1.57kg, and that is the heaviest of the bunch), offer QLED displays, reduced bezels, and stellar battery life (Samsung claims 20 hours).
Regarding the display:
First, QLED is a marketing term. It'd be like Apple saying they're Retina Displays, or XDR Displays, or whatever. Having said that, the "Outdoor Mode" sounds interesting. Though:
with a maximum of 600 nitts using a special “Outdoor Mode” and up to 400 nitts regularly
Apple actually claims 500 nits on both their 13-inch and 15-inch MacBooks Pro already. The Verge's article also doesn't go into detail on what exactly "more color accurate than before" means, and the MBPs are doing fairly well on that front.
Regarding the other specs: these are, as the article notes, Intel Project Athena stuff. That makes them more of a competitor against the MacBook Air or possibly the 13-inch MacBook Pro.
It'll be interesting to see what Apple can/wants to pull off in terms of thickness, lightness, bezels, and battery life on their 2020 and beyond 13-inch (14-inch?) models. They'll probably eventually move to Ice Lake-U and -Y, or they might skip ahead to Tiger Lake. Either way, those models will probably allow for some of the advances Samsung is showing here. Part of that, I would guess, will be eaten up by Apple making the next generation slightly thinner again. Which will obviously be controversial.
It should be noted that Samsung isn't a huge seller of laptops. Intel can't ship these Project Athena / Ice Lake chips in large volumes, which is why they also released the boring iterative Comet Lake-U chips more or less in parallel. And Apple seems once bitten, twice shy about going with risky Intel chips these days. (In particular, their entire 12-inch MacBook history 2015-2018 probably didn't go as planned and/or promised by Intel.)
Lastly, on graphics: the MX250 is better than the low-end 15-inch MacBook Pro option (the Radeon Pro 555X), but worse than the 560X, and much, much worse than the Vega 20. Like with the CPU, the Samsung's GPU just doesn't compete.
The fact that competitors are offering this kind of product means that the lifecycle of the current MacBook Pro may be near its end.
Sure. This design is from 2016, and Apple usually makes major adjustment around every three to four years. (The MBPs in particular saw the 2006 design, which was only a minor adjustment from the 2003 PowerBook G4 Aluminum design; the 2008 Unibody design; the 2012 Retina design; and the 2016 Touch Bar design.)
There's little doubt this year or next year will see some changes beyond a mere speedbump.
To keep up with competition, Apple will have to offer comparable features, many of which current models lack. This is one of the reasons to believe that the release of a 16-inch MacBook Pro is imminent (and perhaps followed by a 14-inch model a few months later).
I don't think the 16-inch MacBook Pro will be that exciting.
Reduce the bezel, sure. Bring back a more reliable keyboard, yes. Some speedbumps. That's about it.
