Latest entry in tablet wars is 'kid safe'

As the tablet wars heat up, Toys R US has announced it is launching its rival to the market-leading iPad, with "kid safe" content.

The device called tabeo is an 18cm tablet using Wi-Fi and running on the Android operating system and will include 50 free, preinstalled apps designed for children.

"Over the past year, we've spent considerable time talking to parents and children to determine what features and functions they really want in a kids' tablet, resulting in tabeo," said Troy Peterson, vice-president at Toys R Us.

"We are proud that tabeo offers robust and flexible parental controls that can help protect children as they surf the internet, and we are pleased to offer the tabeo App Store, which features only kid-safe content carefully curated by the Toys R Us team."

The device has preloaded a number of books, educational programs and games.

Apple's iPad has about two-thirds of the global market for tablets, and the company is expected to introduce a smaller version of it later this year.

Amazon, which introduced three new versions of its Kindle Fire last week, claimed to have 22 per cent of the US market.

Microsoft is launching its Surface tablet in October, and a variety of others on the market use the Google Android operating system.

Photo: Apple's iPad (Getty Images)