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Andrew Hoyle/CNET
Talk about an unexpected item in the bagging area: Tesco is following the Hudl with not only a new tablet but also a smartphone.
Speaking to the BBC, Tesco boss Philip Clarke confirmed both a phone and a follow-up to the Hudl. The Hudl 2 will go on sale in September.
A Tesco spokesperson told CNET today that the phone will hit shop shelves “later in the year.”
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Tesco has lent its name to a phone before, with the basic Tesco VX1 Party Phone back in 2010. This time around it’s reported that unlike that cheap and cheerful Party Phone, the new phone will compete with higher-end phones like the Samsung Galaxy S5 .
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The Hudl 2 is set to be another low-price and relatively low-specced device, however.
The success of the Hudl inspired other high street fixtures to try their own tablets, such as the Argos MyTablet.
“Tesco’s low-budget tablet might have been a good idea,” says Dr Markos Zachariadis of Warwick Business School, “but a high-end smartphone is a bold and quite unpredictable move to make for a non-traditional tech firm with no technology manufacturing experience.
“Mobile producers like Samsung, HTC, Apple and Sony have spent years developing high-tech devices, that include a long list of features to accommodate even the most demanding tech users. Breaking into that category directly and gaining the slightest market share is going to be very difficult for new starters like Tesco.”
Tesco was named last year as one of the best value British networks. You can even get 4G in your shopping trolley as Tesco Mobile offers super-fast data for knock-down prices.
