Tesco Mobile Phone shops to pop up on every High Street

Tesco has launched an all-out assault on Carphone Warehouse, with plans to open Tesco ‘Phone Shops’ on every high street and a major push into the contracts market.
The supermarket giant is speeding up the rollout of 500 new phone shops. From this week, it will open three phone stores each week to deliver at least 100 per year. With 107 Phone Shops already open, Tesco Mobile should hit its target of 500 shops by the end of 2013. Tesco anticipates it will create around 750 jobs this year through the rollout, made up of both Tesco staff and external recruitment.

It is estimated up to 3,000 jobs will be created over a three-year period. The first 200 Phone Shops will be in Tesco’s larger Extra stores. A further 300 phone stores will open in Tesco’s superstores and its high street Metro shops. Each will be customised to fit the store’s profile. In an exclusive interview, Tesco Telecoms chief Lance Batchelor told Mobile: ‘We are working out how to put a full service Phone Shop in our Metro stores and we are trialling different ways of doing this. This will give us the ability to be on every high street in the country.’

Tesco is also targeting the contracts market, adding 28 new handsets to its contract range this month. Batchelor forecasts at least 333,000 contract sales in Tesco Phone Shops this year. Batchelor said: ‘With prepay, we were only playing in half the market. Now, with our Phone Shops and the addition of 28 new handsets in our contracts range, we have moved into the whole of the consumer market.’ No commissions are on offer to Phone Shop staff in order to discourage ‘hard sell’ tactics. Tesco is also wooing the networks, with plans to deliver operator upgrades later this year.