Tesco Scraps Plans For Budget 4G Smartphone To Focus on Hudl 2 Tablet
Tesco says an increasingly competitive market and the need to focus on the Hudl 2 have forced it to cancel smartphone ambitions
Tesco has scrapped plans to create a budget 4G smartphone because of an increasingly competitive market and wants to focus all its attention on the second generation of its “tremendously successful” hudl tablet.
The hudl was launched earlier this year and has so far sold more than 500,000 units. Tesco says the tablet’s low price tag was part of its mission to make desirable items more affordable (and presumably to sell more groceries and other products online), and it wanted to do the same with smartphones.
Plans for the smartphone were only announced in May, but the decision to scrap the project was taken in July, according to Robin Terrell, group multi-channel director at Tesco.
Hudl smartphone scrap
“We were confident that we could offer customers something we saw was lacking in the mobile market: an affordable, quality 4g smartphone handset,” he said. “As we developed the idea in the first few months of the year, we could see a gap we could fill for our customers.
“The technology sector is fast changing and constantly evolving and since then, the mobile market has become even more competitive. So in early July, I took the decision that we would put the phone on hold and concentrate on the hudl 2 tablet.”
Terrell says the hudl 2 will improve on the original device in every conceivable way. He says it will offer superior screen size, speed, design and accessories with the intention it will become a household’s primary tablet rather than the original, which was conceived as a secondary system.
The decision to produce low-cost tablets isn’t just philanthropically motivated, and provides the retail giant with a way of getting its digital services, such as Blinkbox, grocery shopping and banking applications, into as many hands as possible.
Currently online transactions account for less than 15 percent of Tesco’s sales compared to the 45 percent generated by self-service checkouts and food is still its most important market. But Tesco says it has recognised the threat of online competitors and wants to offer multiple ways of paying for good and services.
It is expected that the hudl 2 will be made available in the next few weeks.
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