Aldi $249 tablets run out in minutes (+ slideshow)
- — 06 June, 2012 09:49
The North Sydney Aldi store at 8.30am
Special buys German supermarket chain, Aldi, began selling its $249 Bauhn-branded Android tablets across its stores at 8am today but stocks ran out in a matter of minutes in some stores.
ARN and PCWorld joined the queue at the Aldi North Sydney store to get a glimpse of the latest gadget and have a chat with prospective buyers.
However, due to a lack of proper ushering, allocation and what appeared to be a stock of only two boxes (not more than 50 tablets in total), many consumers left the store disappointed.
Instead of selling one tablet per customer, people were angered by a few that walked out with two or three tablets in hand.
Some of the consumers that did not manage to get one had been lining up for the device from 8am in the morning.
“I was probably about the 12th person here. They told us that the tablets were racked up at the back but had them at the register. I got all lined up and those that got in front were buying two or three tablets each – I didn’t manage to get one,” Matt Thompson said.
ARN spoke to a few of the people to get a sense of why they were purchasing the 9.7-inch Android tablet.
“I briefly had a look at the specifications and for the price, it’s pretty good. Why should I buy a table for $500 when I can get it for $250?” Satish Nagarajan said.
An elderly customer mentioned that he was purchasing the tablet to keep up to date with the technologies available in the market.
“The last time I looked at a computer was two years ago. I don’t have the technical knowledge like many do and I need to educate myself. I previously bought other gadgets from Aldi and it’s just as good as those you get from mainstream vendors,” Herbert Hager, saied.
Another customer, Stan Nigelo, mentioned that he was purchasing the device to use while he commutes to and from work.
“I got my own computer to use at work and at home, so it’s just for reading stuff on the bus,” he said.
Bauhn is an Aldi trademark.
The device runs Google's latest operating system, Ice Cream Sandwich Android 4.0.
It features 16GB of internal memory, two megapixel rear-facing camera, 1GHz single-core Amlogic Cortex A9 processor, 1GB of RAM and a microSD card slot for memory expansion.
One customer said that he bought the tablet because he prefers the Android operating system, and this tablet was the cheapest Android available in the market.
“With the iPad, you don’t stop spending. The tablet is over-priced to begin with, then you keep spending for many of the applications,” Martin Bregozzo said.
The tablet is available from all Aldi stores over the counter - if there any stocks left.
Ross Catanzariti contributed to this report
