Asus 7 inch tablet not coming to UK

Asus has been busy unveiling new products over at CES this week.

And the company has been responsible for one of the more exciting slates to have been revealed – although the bad news is it won’t be coming to this country. Not yet, anyway.

The device in question is a new 7 inch tablet which boasts a meaty Tegra 3 quad core processor, yet it weighs in at a budget price level of $249, just £160 in our money (but likely to translate to around £200 or possibly more, of course, should it come out in the UK).

This is pitched as a Kindle Fire rival given the budget 7 inch form factor, except with the far more powerful engine there’ll be no worries about a sluggish interface or browsing experience. The tablet will run Ice Cream Sandwich without breaking a sweat, too.

A well specced budget tablet certainly sounds a tempter, but Asus doesn’t believe it will fly over here just yet.

The marketing manager for Asus in this country, John Swatton, told the Inquirer: “In the UK we don’t see a demand for the 7in tablet at the moment and we will be focusing on releasing a Padfone, which is a smartphone and tablet hybrid. This will be formally announced at Mobile World Congress next month.”

No demand for a cheap, high performance compact tablet? We’re surprised to hear that. The Padfone, incidentally, is a slate with a smartphone nestled in the rear of the device.

Still, Swatton says “at the moment” which indicates a delayed launch, hopefully, rather than the fact that Asus isn’t intending to bring the Tegra 3 device to UK shores.

Meanwhile, we’ll just have to make do with the Transformer Prime which has just launched, although that isn’t a budget proposition.

We’re not sure whether the Padfone is going to be a viable piece of hardware, as opposed to a gimmick.