LG's Veep Tips Google TV Launch for Mid-May

Posted 05/07/2012 at 6:28am | by Paul Lilly

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Are you ready for the second coming of Google's Internet-enabled TV platform? Well, ready or not, Google TV is once again on the horizon, and this time it will be LG making a big push to promote the platform, not Logitech, which had some harsh words for the service after being burned by weak sales and left holding millions of dollars in unsold inventory. That's all in the past as far as LG is concerned, and the future starts in mid-May.

"Production of Google TVs will start from May 17 from our factory in Mexico and U.S. consumers will be able to buy the product from the week of May 21," Ro Seogho, a senior LG executive, recently told a handful of reporters, according to Silicon Valley's Mercury News.

Google's first attempt to capture an audience in the living room proved abysmal to the point where the platform had been all but forgotten on the consumer side. Logitech called its participation a "gigantic" mistake, one that cost the company "well over $100 million in operating profits" for what was ultimately a "beta" product, and while Logitech wouldn't rule out the platform being successful one day, the company said it would be a "grandchild of Google TV."

Whether or not enough has changed since then remains to be seen, and is apparently a gamble LG is willing to take, in the U.S. at first, and then depending on sales performance, in Europe and Asia sometime down the line.

"LG has constantly strived to provide consumers with wider choices in home entertainment that bring the highest level of sophistication and convenience," said Havis Kwon, President and CEO of LG Electronics Home Entertainment Company, when introducing Google TV at CES earlier this year. "Through Google TV, LG has merged Google’s established Android operating system with LG’s proven 3D and Smart TV technologies, offering consumers a new and enthralling TV experience."

Along with Google TV, LG said it will continue to advance its own Smart TV platform based on NetCast, which will be thrust into 60 percent of LG's flat panel TVs scheduled to come out in 2012.

Image Credit: LG