Augen Tablet Selling for About $150 at Kmart

Augen may not be one of the best-known computer brands but the company is getting plenty of attention this week with its $149.99, 7-inch Android (News - Alert) tablet appearing in the Kmart circular, according to Endgadget.

Later this week, Kmart is expected to have in stock the Android 2.1 tablet with WiFi, 2GB of storage and 256MB of RAM (News - Alert).

The device will have access to the Android Market App Store, according to Endgadget. With Android Market, over 70,000 apps are available. They can be searched by genre, top free, or top paid apps.

As of early this week, Endgadget reported that neither they nor several readers were able to locate the 7-inch tablet at any Kmart retail location in the United States.

But Augen told Endgadget that the device should be hitting store shelves later this week. The company was unsure whether it would be listed and available on Kmart's online store.

Kmart is a chain of discount department stores located in the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam. It competes with Walmart and Target, among others. Kmart has over 1,300 retail locations.

Augen said that the features on the Gentouch Tablet PC, powered by Android 2.1, include:

• 800x480 color TFT touch panel screen
• CPU: 800 Mhz
• Ram: DDR2 256mb
• Internal memory: 2GB
• Expansion slots: SD/MMC card slot up to 16GB
• Wi-Fi connectivity with full web browsing capability
•  Supports Ebook formats: Text, PDF, E-PUB, HTML
•  Supports media formats: MP3, WMA, FLAC, AAC
• Supports most popular E-Book formats
• Picture viewer in JPEG, BMP
• Video player
• Rechargeable lithium battery
• Carrying case included

In addition to the 7-inch tablet, Augen has also released TheBook e-reader with a similar 7-inch LCD. It doesn't run Android. It sells for $89.

Augen, headquartered in Hollywood, Fla., is a consumer electronics company, which focuses on high-tech, affordable digital technology for the mainstream consumer market.

In 2004, Augen launched its own consumer electronics brand. The current product line-up includes: eReaders, Netbooks, and Tablet PCs.

Although it has its own brand, the company’s alliance with leading manufacturers makes Augen the exclusive representative for technology brought to the mainstream market. The alliance allows Augen to provide ODM and OEM products to business partners.

Several companies are now developing or manufacturing Tablet PCs in order to compete with Apple’s (News - Alert) highly successful iPad, TMCnet reported.