There’s a wonderful institution called the ‘Aldi promotion’ here in Germany. Somehow this cheap, almost storage-room style supermarket with very few known-brands on the pallets has reached out to people from every walk of life. Aldi exists in other countries too but in the UK, you certainly wont find the chattering classes in there. I heard that it got the seal-of-approval from some A-class German celebs a few years back and since then, everyone is in there. I don’t need German celebs to approve it (not that I could ever spot one) because I was a fan from the first time I saw the special promotions.
Twice a week they make a feature promotion. It includes food and other goods and is usually done on a theme. Italy, gardening, DIY or home entertainment and it works exceptionally well. People sign up for the email notifications, exchange tips at the coffee machine (‘check out the Chateauneuf this week, my friend says it’s worth twice that much’) browse the website and make sure they pick-up the brochure in the shop that shows the offers for the following week. On the day of the special offers the leading products usually sell out in hours. Queues at 7am are not uncommon and there often a push and shove to get to the products first. One man even pulled a gun when he couldn’t find his dream PC, so you can imagine, with 1600 ‘south’ shops and 2400 ‘north’ shops in Germany (I believe owned and operated separately by two bothers although I could be wrong on that one,) hundreds of shops in other countries and this amazing twice-weekly marketing pulse they have immense buying and selling power.
On the 3rd of July, Aldi will be offering the MSI-Wind-based Medion Akoya netbook with XP, the 80GB drive, 1Gb of RAM and Corel WordPerfect for 399 Euro. Its one of the cheapest PC’s they’ve ever offered and it’s in a market that has huge momentum. News stories about it Germany are flooding out and today, the first Aldi brochure scan was made. By my calculations it seems highly possible that Aldi could sell 10 devices in every one of the 1600 Aldi Süd (South, the North shops aren’t carrying it) shops. That’s over 15,000 netbooks in a day! Lets assume that they’ve negotiated deals for other shops and countries for the same week too. We could easily be looking at a 20-30K piece order with the OEM here. Amazing. I’d love to know how much they got the devices for!
Apple sold 10,000 iphones on the launch day in Germany last year. I bet this netbook beats that by a big margin so I’m looking forward to the news stories in the evening of the 3rd!
News via Heise.de where nearly 500 people have made comments on the news item at time of writing!
Click for Medion Akoya tech info and links.
Usually, both Aldis are carrying the computer promos. So we can expect the Akoya at Aldi Nord soon after this.
Aldi UK only showing the Medion Akoya with 15.4″ screen. Can’t find info beyond 29th June. Might have more info after Thursday.
I’m curious if Hofer (the Austrian pendant to Aldi) will sell them too…
Nowadays most computer promos cause neither long queues nor fights over the devices. But this was different a few years ago (and still is different with some of the promos). When they started selling pcs in the late 90s things weren`t so peacfull however. But back then, the offers were really great in the value/price department.
So I just hope that not too many peaople are intrigued by this offer. Otherwise it`s gonna get nasty…
@NobbyNobbs: I can’t agree with you, because everytime there’s a computer at Aldi’s, there are fights… Within seconds the computers (or printers for that matter) are gone and there are people who buy more than one at a time…
I’m tempted to visit a few Aldi’s on the morning of the 3rd just to see what’s going on!
Wurzelmann.
Where do you live. I’ll remember to stay away ;-)
In Bonn, people havent discovered computers yet so we should be OK round here !!
I live in Vienna and I twice tried to buy a printer (Hewlett Packard) at Hofer, but there’s not the hint of a chance there… Hofer opens its doors at nine AM (or something like that) and five minutes later, all the printers were gone… I tried ten different Hofer stores in Vienna – well spread around the city – but nowhere was a printer left… Madness, I tell you…
@Wurzelmann
Really? Here (Mainz/ Munich) laptops and tfts were still available several weeks after the last promo.
I only avoid Aldi if there are kids cloths on sale. You really need a decent training in close combat to survive this…
@Nobby: Odd… There are different interests in buying Aldi-Stuff in different countries obviouslly, because kids clothes are still available months later… :-D
I am waiting for these “hard drive” versions like this to offer both XP and Ubuntu Linux in a dual boot (out of the box). Now, that would be a real value and would extend their feature list beyond the competition. The ad’s would say – we offer the best of both worlds, twice the value, at the best price! AND on top of that to be offering a full line-up of FOSS on the XP install (OpenOffice.org, Gimp, Scribus, Tux-Racer, and much more)! Now that would knock some socks off!
hey wurzelmann…
i live in vienna as well ;-)
you are right…computer devices at hofer are sold out immediately…
verrückt :-)
OMG DO YOU GET THAT FREE PEN LOL
@kyuss: De sann olle deppad… Hehe…
I am sorry but I fail to understand what the hype is all about? At 10″ it’s not extremely small and at 399 Euros / $622 I don’t see it as any super deal, sorry!
@ecsk2: It is not a bad deal, I mean, this seems to be a good device with good specs and the price is okay… Of course there are smaller computers and of course there are cheaper ones, but I think it is a good compromise… depending from what you actually need, of course…
@wurzelmann
du sogstas :-)
@ecsk2: Compare this to an EeePC 900 12G (9″, 1GB RAM, 4+8GB SSD, no harddisk) for €399.
But you are right in one point, the Medion Akoya Mini is not a “specially cheap” deal as many people believe everything at Aldi is. It is the same price you would pay on the internet for the MSI Wind that the Akoya is based on (according to Chippy).
However, what Aldi is doing is:
Adding a very consumer friendly service for everyday people – They’ll normally take back a device you bought there within 14 days if you don’t like (and it still is in mint condition) and also make it quite easy to return something that doesn’t work for the whole warranty period of 24 months.
And basically, they reach the masses, the consumers that do not search the internet, discuss various devices in forums and blogs like we do. As Chippy described, they will bring volume and visibility to the market.
And by the way: From other posts from you I believe you are located in the US. Unfortunately (for us Europeans), price translations do not just work by applying the current €/$ exchange rate. The same device would be sold in the US at a price of approximately $500, not the $622 you calculated. We have VAT included in the price (which is significantly higher than the average sales tax in the US). The other thing is that retailers in Europe have to give a 24 month guarantee on the device (compare to 12 months or less in the US) which obviously also is factored in. And last but not least most Asian manufacturers currently are still accepting a hit from the week US$ to be able to sell in the US, don’t know how long they will continue to do this, though.
“The other thing is that retailers in Europe have to give a 24 month guarantee on the device (compare to 12 months or less in the US) which obviously also is factored in.”
But this guarantee is in fact only valid six months , because after that time it is up to the consumer to prove that the error was already implemented in the device when you bought it. So this should not really make such a big difference.
The biggest advantage of Aldi is, like you already mentioned, that they don`t give you a hard time if you return the device.
Aldi are growing in Australia too, Im converted as far as 95% of my food shopping is concerned. Hope they bring this deal here!
“@ecsk2: Compare this to an EeePC 900 12G (9″, 1GB RAM, 4+8GB SSD, no harddisk) for €399.”
Well I am comparing the 20G EEE I just bought myself for $500 that’s like 322 Euros, and you say “no harddisk” yes and I see that as a GOOD THING! HDDs are old history and it is only cost that prevents us all from using SSD at this point really.
Ok now I don’t know anything about this company offering it, and North Americans are spoiled with just about every place taking back products without any reason as it is.
24 months from now any device I own now will be obsolete if not in 12 months :)
Yes I know that VAT is included (by law) in the price in Europe unlike the US, and that it is in the 20%+ range most of the time, I might be located here but I am a European really :) but even at that it only comes down to $500 which isn’t anything special for a Netbook, I think netbooks shouldn’t really go over the $500-600 period.
Oh so its a food place too? I see the even are in the US!
http://aldi.us/index_ENU_HTML.htm
Aldi got to Oz. Man they are taking over the world (except in the U.S. and U.K. where the hypermarkets seem to be getting bigger and bigger by the day!)
S.
Chippy I just posted a link showing them in the US :)
322 x 1.2 = 386 euros looks pretty good price to me, for virtually the same price he is getting a much better system with beter specs, the eee ssd is split into two the bigger being rubbish quality.
I installed the full XP onto the 20G EEE without any issues whatsoever, just make the partition on the 16GB part, no other issues so far at all. I prefer SSD over HDD by far, especially if/when I’m going to run MS’ OS’!
hofer the wings for the wings hofer dove !!!!!!!