Argos MyTablet announced, to compete in growing UK tablet market

The gloves are off as two of UK’s largest retailers face off in an already very competitive UK tablet market. Argos has just announced the MyTablet, its sub-100 pound offering that is set to rival fellow UK retailer Tesco’s popular Hudl tablet.

The Hudl tablet arrived in the UK late last month and sported some rather decent hardware for a 119 GBP tablet, or roughly $190. It sported a 7.0 inch screen that had a resolution of 1440×900 pixels and ran on a 1.5 GHz quad-core processor, a Mali 400 quad-core graphics processor, and 1 GB of RAM. It also had 16 GB of internal storage and was equipped with the usual connectivity features such as WiFi, Bluetooth, micro-USB, and HDMI. Apparently, the Hudl was quite a hit and Tesco reported sales of up to 35,000 tablets in just two days since it launched.

Argos, whose parent company Home Retail has had its profits sink for five years in a row, wants a bite out of that pie as well. However, Argos’ MyTablet sacrifices a few pieces for a lower price point. While it also comes with a 7.0-inch display, the MyTablet sports a much lower 1024×600 resolution. Storage capacity has also been halved to 8 GB. Battery life is also said to be quite dismal.

The light at the end of the tunnel comes in the form of the MyTablet’s price tag of 99 GBP, around $160. Perhaps Argos is hoping the very low price will entice enough buyers away from Apple’s iPad, but it will be facing some stiff competition even without Tesco’s Hudl, as the Amazon Kindle Fire is also price at 99 GBP and Google’s Nexus 7 offers a more expensive but better alternative at 199 GBP, or $320.