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It’s been a bleak couple of years for the British high street, but no-one seems to have told the mobile phone shop. Mobiles are flying off shelves so fast that UK network Vodafone plans to open 150 new shops in the next year.
Vodafone says the new stores will create 1,400 new jobs across the UK.
The first batch of new stores will mostly be in and around London, in Fulham, Ilford, Notting Hill, Walthamstow and Wembley, as well as in Bicester and Perry Barr in Birmingham. The £100 million investment will take the number of Vodafone shops to a total of 500 around Britain.
British gadget and technology shops were among the high-profile casualties of 2013’s financial struggles, with HMV, Blockbuster and Comet shutting up shop to varying degrees.
Yet high-street and shopping-centre phone shops are doing so well that Samsung is getting in on the action. The world’s biggest phone manufacturer is joining forces with both rival retail chains Phones 4U and Carphone Warehouse to open 75 new own-brand Samsung stores across Great Britain and Europe.
So ubiquitous is the high street mobile phone shop it’s even inspired three series’ of a sitcom, Channel 4’s ” PhoneShop“.
