BIC mobile phone comes to Spain after French success

The BIC disposa… excuse me, “ready-to-use” phone is being launched in Spain by operator Orange. The product is amazingly simple, and really very cool. It’s a cheap, pre-charged mobile phone that comes with a SIM card and 20 minutes of calls. You can just take it out of the box and start using it right away.

The device was first launched in France last year. There have been some changes since then - one of the biggest being the change in price. The original phone cost almost 50 euro, and came with 10 mins of voice calls. This one gets twice as many minutes, and only costs 29 euro. It does nothing apart from talk and text, with an FM radio thrown in for good measure. Your minutes stop working after two months, but the phone can be registered for continued use. It’s just that the registration and top-up process is a pain in the ass, so most people probably won’t bother.

Orange reports that the phone has sold 110,000 since launch last August. A recent survey it did shows the BIC is mostly popular amongst first-time phone owners, or those that don’t want a fancy phone:

90% said the phone had all the functions they really need.

30% had never had a mobile telephone before

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What we think?

This isn’t the phone for me, but I really like the idea behind it. It really is a device for people who have no time for mobiles - at €1.50 per minute for voice calls, you wouldn’t want to be using it very often.