UK supermarket chain Asda is set to enter the lucrative British mobile phone market, taking on rivals Tesco and sparking a new price battle.
The Wal-Mart owned grocery retailer is teaming up with mobile phone giants Vodafone in a bid to launch the Asda Mobile, which will be PAYG (pay as you go) service .
The service will be launched by the end of June but neither Asda nor Vodafone would comment on details regarding the cost.
Jennifer England, spokeswoman for Asda said, “We are famous for good value and a common-sense approach, something the mobile phone market is not famous for. The service will be in tune with those values.”
“It is something our customers have been asking us to offer, we have 13 million coming through our stores a week and we are confident there will be a lot of demand,” she added.
Ms England also stated that the service would not feature Asda-branded handsets .
Tesco announced the launch of its very own mobile service back in 2003 in a partnership deal with network providers O2 . Britain’s largest supermarket now has around 1.4 million customers on board .
The company’s strategy has been very successful in attracting new customers – the offer of three simple tariffs, some as cheap as 10p a minute for a voice call and 5p for a text.
Asda have now followed suit and the battle between the top 2 supermarkets is likely to intensify.
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