Tesco's Hudl Tablet Takes a Page from Amazon's Playbook

The Amazon Kindle Fire is often regarded as one of the most successful small tablets ever. Bringing into play a combination of factors like low price, high ease of use, and a massive infrastructure of available content for the device, it's really not surprising it did well. But Tesco, one of the biggest retailers in the U.K., is looking to take a page out of that very same book, so to speak, with the release of its own tablet, the Hudl.

The Hudl tablet runs Android 4.2.2, or Jellybean for those who favor the sweet name. The Hudl packs in a quad-core 1.5 GHz processor, backed up by 16 gigabytes of storage on board, which can be augmented by microSD cards to get it up to 48 gigabytes. There's a micro-HDMI port for exporting content to bigger screens, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, a dual-band Wi-Fi connection, and all of it in support of a seven inch display showing at 1440 x 900 resolution, which also happens to be scratch resistant. But the real draw for the Hudl has to be its access to media.

The Hudl, being an Android device, already has access to Google Play and its massive load of applications and the like, but that's not all the content that the Hudl can get in on. Tesco has been hard at work building digital content offerings for users to access, picking up online bookseller Mobcast and putting some extra bulk into its Blinkbox service. Add to this Tesco's already present Web portal for online shopping, grocery delivery, online banking, telephone services, insurance and more and the picture becomes quite a bit clearer.

Basically, from this angle, Tesco looks to be making a significant push to become the Amazon of the U.K., and that's an idea that's got to raise some eyebrows. Tesco has made what looks like a smart move here, getting the infrastructure well in hand first before offering the device that will use said infrastructure. Thanks to the early moves by Tesco, which got things in place before the company offered up a variety of things to do with the device, the device itself will now prove a worthwhile value, selling at 119 pounds sterling (around $191 U.S.) and offering plenty of things to do with said device. This is much like Amazon's entire strategy with the Kindle Fire, and given how well it worked for Amazon, it's likely that it will work here just as well.

For now, the device will only be available in the U.K., which further cements the concept that Tesco wants to grab this particular market by the horns before looking to make any kind of expansion. Given that some reports suggest that three out of four homes in the region don't have any kind of tablet at all, the market is rife with possibilities, and all of said possibilities look good for Tesco.

Just where Hudl will go remains to be seen—it certainly has enough possible directions that may come into play, and more than one of same could be actually used—but the early picture looks bright for Tesco, and shows us all the value of putting the horse before the cart.