Argos looks to bag e-commerce boost with own-brand tablet

Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 10:59 by Simon Crisp

Last month, Tesco joined the tablet market with its Hudl device, which follows in the footsteps of products like the Amazon Kindle Fire, by tying a physical, web-enabled product to a particular retailer's brand.

This is a smart move, since it gives these companies control over the standard array of software which is included and means that customers are more likely to spend their money through their e-commerce channels than their competitors.

Now the high street chain, Argos, has released its own device in this category called the MyTablet, which will sell for £99.99, or about £20 less than the Hudl.

In the last 12 months, Argos has seen sales made from mobile phones and tablets increase by 114 per cent, according to V3.co.uk, which illustrates why it is important for it to have the MyTablet on the market with its m-commerce app preinstalled.

Although Argos has no digital distribution service for apps or media, unlike its rivals, it will be hoping that the low asking price and decent specifications are enough of a draw for new users, who want to play games and carry out safe shopping online.

The MyTablet has a seven inch display, a dual core 1.6GHz processor and just 8GB of built-in storage, which puts it at the lower end of the technical spectrum, even compared to the Hudl.

What you do get, on top of the Argos app for shopping online, is the original Angry Birds game installed straight out of the box, along with social networking apps for Twitter and Facebook.

As an affordable tablet, the MyTablet might actually be quite a good buy for kids, because its inexpensive nature means that damaging it will not be too much of an issue for parents.