Comment: Tesco's Hudl taps into new routes to market

Of all the technology-driven announcements from retailers in the past fortnight, the unveiling of Tesco’s own-brand tablet Hudl is at once the most audacious but also the most indicative of the changing face of UK retail.

The tablet market is already characterised by fierce competition, even at the lower price points in which Tesco wants to play, and bigger players in tech such as Microsoft have struggled to make the impact they might want. It will be interesting also to watch how Tesco’s positioning of Hudl - as a brand aimed at those that have found these technologies inaccessible - will succeed in an arena that until now has all been about aspiration.

But the move by the UK’s largest grocer in many ways tells us more about how it views the changing nature of its relationship with its customers as it does any desire to take on Apple and Amazon in the fight for product market share.

The continuing digitalisation of retail has not only opened up opportunities for the likes of Tesco to broaden its remit as purveyors of content – the Tesco-owned Blinkbox sells everything from films to music and from next month books – it has altered the conversation it can have with its consumers: adding opportunity and complexity in the process.

As that dialogue increasingly moves online, Hudl is a means by which Tesco can take greater ownership of that relationship and is a reflection of the potential to place its brands and products directly into the hands of the end consumer without the need for a physical store.