Argos Joins The Tablet War With Tesco

Argos has stepped into the battleground for tablets this Christmas by launching a tablet computer today, less than a month after Tesco launched its own version.

The Argos MyTablet undercuts Tesco by £20 with a price tag of £99.99. Argos said that while 'millions' of people have already bought a tablet over the last year there are still around 75 per cent of the population without one.

'We know that tablets will feature heavily on Christmas lists this year. MyTablet is highly competitive with a great specification and fits neatly in the range of tablets we have on offer,' said Argos managing director John Walden.

While Argos's motivation appears more about gaining a slice of the tablet market - and to complete with online rivals like Amazon and Ebay - rival Tesco clearly sees it as an opportunity to hook in customers to its wider array of online and digital services.

The tablet market has grown form virtually nothing three years ago to 15 million users in the UK. This is expected to triple to 44 million by 2020 Enders Analysis predicts.

Benedict Evans, a mobile analyst at Enders, told the Financial Times: 'The price of tablets has dropped to the point where tablets are becoming customer acquisition tools. Retailers are thinking about how they can use it to build their business.'

Tesco's 7 inch device, priced at £119, also runs Android Jelly Bean, is pre-loaded with apps such as YouTube and has bespoke versions of its own digital services such as Blinkbox and access to Clubcard TV. It has 16GB of storage with an option to expand it to 48GB comes in blue, red, black and purple.

MyTablet has a 7 inch, 1024x600 resolution LCD glass screen and and has 8GB of memory. With a Micro SD card it can support 32GB. It runs Google's Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2 operating system and is powered by a 1.6GHz dual core processor.

It is also clearly targeting the teenage market. It is available in pink or silver metal cases, comes with free pre-loaded games and apps including BBC iPlayer, Angry Birds, Facebook, Twitter, an e-Book reader app and a front facing camera for Skyping. Its association with Google means that users will also have access to millions of apps through Google Play.