At Google I/O we got to have an up close look at the LG WK9 Smart Display along with the JBL Link View Smart Display. We’ve yet to see availability information or pricing for either the Lenovo or the JBL Smart Displays, but LG Australia have finally spoken about the WK9.
At this stage the news isn’t good with an LG Australia spokesperson confirming that ‘at this point in time the WK9 is not coming to Australia’. Instead they re-confirmed that they will be bringing the Google Assistant enabled LG WK7 ThinQ Speaker to Australia for $299 as they announced in April. Unfortunately we’ve had no more details on when that will be happening just yet, but we hope it’s not too much longer.
Smart Speakers are great, but our hands on with both the 8″ and 10″ Lenovo Smart Displays at Mobile World Congress and the LG WK9 and JBL Link View at Google I/O have whet our appetite for what Smart Displays can do. More than just a tablet with a bigger speaker, these designs are built on the newly announced Android Things platform, and will expand what the Google Assistant can offer you in terms of a richer, visual experience – similar to what we saw announced at Google I/O but also with other features as you can see in the demo video of the Lenovo models at MWC.
If there are any changes to LG Australia’s plans we’ll be sure to let you know.
Smart displays are a new category. It takes boldness and foresight to bring a new product category to market.
Whoever runs LG Australia has shown themselves to be inept. They are waiting to see if it works in other regions first, before trying it in Australia, even though Australia is known to be the land of early adopters.
If every company took the attitude of LG Australia, no new product categories would ever be introduced.
Thanks to LG’s boneheaded stupidity, it looks like I’ll have to put up with JBL’s ugly black football as my planned bedside clock.
Not overly happy with this turn of events.
can someone tell LG putting ThinQ at the end of all their products makes them look cheap and stupid