Tesco's gamble in offering its own tablet has paid off, with the retailer announcing that it sold more than 400,000 of its Hudl tablet since its launch.
The supermarket giant was one of a number of store chains which put out their own devices to compete with Apple, Google and Amazon, all of which also had tablets aiming to clean up at Christmas as sales boomed.
Roughly 100,000 were sold during December, based on previous reports from the company that it had sold 300,000 by the start of that month. Demand was so high that some stores ran out, and they were being offered on eBay for £180 - a third more than the retail price of £119. Tesco's chief digital officer executive Michael Comish admitted that sales to the start of December had caught the company by surprise, putting it out of stock twice.
Other store chains, including Aldi and Argos, also offered their own tablets, all like Tesco running Google's Android software. None has so far released any sales figures.
News that Tesco was working on a tablet leaked out in August, and the "Hudl" name was discovered before the launch through trademark filings.
At the time Jeremy Davies of the analysis company Context said that "the mind boggles" at Tesco offering an own-brand tablet, but suggested that "they would look to sell it for about £100, and initially order a few hundred thousand devices." He was proved right.
Tesco has since said that it is working on a second-generation Hudl, to be released later this year.
The 7in tablet went on sale at the end of September 2013, priced to compete directly with Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire, and substantially undercut Apple's iPad mini. It was sold through more than a thousand of the chain's supermarkets, as well as online.
