LG has followed Korean business rival Samsung into the all-in-one kiosk market, launching its own product aimed at self-service applications like retail and the restaurant industry.

The LG Kiosk will be launched first in the Korean home market and later in Europe and North America, likely by the end of the year. The all-in-one unit has a 27" touchscreen, and supports ordering and payments via a card reader, QR/bar code scanner and receipt printer. There are options for NFC and voice-driven navigation, as well. The unit runs on Windows 10 IoT Enterprise, not LG WebOS, the operating system used for LG smart displays.

The product does not look wildly different from the Samsung kiosk, but there are distinctions. The big one is that OS. Samsung's kiosk runs on its proprietary, Linux-derived Tizen OS, while LG is on the much more widely-used Windows. The screen is also larger, 27 inches versus Samsung's 24-inch version.

Florian Rotberg of the German consultancy Invidis observes:

The challenge for entering the market lies in setting up a kiosk partner system, which can differ from country to country due to regulatory peculiarities. Unlike the "mass product" digital signage, kiosk solutions require regional adjustments.

For the existing kiosk providers, however, LG's market entry means further disruption. The highly individual kiosk solutions that have dominated the market to date now have a Windows-based, highly scalable competitor in the wake of Samsung kiosk in the form of Tizen. Whether and how the two Korean display suppliers will make their kiosk solutions a success in Europe remains to be seen. The trend towards the cloud (technology, software and fintechs) definitely makes it easier for the new kiosk disruptors.