US booksellers Barnes & Noble has announced the arrival of the Nook tablet, the much anticipated competition to the Amazon Kindle Fire.

While neither tablet has been announced for the UK, it is interesting to see the bun fight happening Stateside as it may well set a precedent for what eventually happens in the UK market.

The Barnes & Noble Nook tablet has been given a 7-inch IPS LCD screen, a 1GHz dual-core CPU and1GB of RAM.

There's also 16GB of storage on board and a slot for an additional 32GB and it will run Android 3.2.

When it comes to battery life, Barnes & Noble claims 11 hours of reading time and around eight hours of video watching. That is if you switch the wireless off.

Friendly fire

While most of the Nook tablet's specs are similar to the Amazon Kindle Fire's, the tablet comes at a bit more of a premium.

It will hit shops at $249, compared to $199 for the Amazon Kindle Fire. But Barnes & Noble is hoping that its third-party link-ups will entice people – they include Hulu, Pandora and Netflix.

The Barnes & Noble Nook tablet release date is 17 November.