£5 mobile phone quartet at Asda could pull prices further down

Walmart-owned British Supermarket Asda has started to sell more than 50,000 mobile phone handsets for £5 when purchased with a £10 top up; that's cheaper than a pack of cigarettes.

This is part of a bid to attract more customers to Pay as you go services from a number of mobile phone providers, which Peter Pritchard, ASDA Trading Director, says would allow customer to be in control of their mobile phone expenses.

A few days ago, a US-based company called Hop-on announced that it would sell a £10 disposable mobile phone which is arguably less feature-rich than any of the four £5 mobile phones that Asda is selling.

The four models are the Nokia 1112, Sagem My150x, Sagem My220x and Sagem My212x; with the last two even offering a colour screen.

An Asda spokesperson said that there are no strings attached to the price and did not mention whether more stock will be available at £5 once the initial batch of 50,000 is depleted.