Apple, HP, Samsung and RIM might be happy to price their respective tablets at the £500 or above mark, but it seems Taiwanese rivals Asus and Acer are involved in their own personal race to the bottom.

The unveiling of Acer's £300 Iconia comes days after Asus lifted the lid on what, at the time, appeared to be the competitively priced Eee Pad Transformer, which starts at £379.

Size isn't everything

Acer, however, appears to be pitching Iconia – Honeycomb-powered and equipped with Nvidia's Tegra 2 – at the existing Galaxy Tab market.

The tablet will come with a 7-inch display, 512MB of RAM and 8GB of storage, suggesting the firm isn't aiming to sit at the top table when it comes to specs.

Yet, it does have full HD support to enable video playback at 1080p, while the tablet's capacitive touch screen will sport a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels.

Currently listed for release in the UK on April 20 according to Amazon, Iconia will roll out just two weeks after the launch of Asus's Eee Pad Transformer on April 6, and a day after RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook goes on sale in the US. 

[source: NetbookNews.com]