New devices have the monqi operating system for parents to monitor their children’s behaviour
Verve Connect is targeting 50,000 shipments of its new monqi-infused IMO S2 smartphone over the next 12 months.
The IMO S2 will be exclusively available in 460 Tesco Mobile phone stores across the country and is aimed at parents who have children between the ages of six and 14.
monqi specialises in developing software that helps children get started with mobile technology.
As a result, parents will be able to control their children’s activity on the S2 by managing their contacts and applications, accessing their live location and blocking illicit content from being browsed.
The smartphone is currently available for preorder and is expected to be in Tesco stores from November 28 from £12 per month or £99 on pay-as-you-go.
IMO director of propositions and sales Nigel Whitehead told Mobile News that Tesco is the perfect fit to sell the S2 smartphone.
Whitehead said: “We chose Tesco as it fits our customer profile, as they have a good reputation as being a family-friendly retailer and so seemed a natural fit to sell our product.”
Whitehead is hoping a solid launch with Tesco and the lead-up to Christmas can support its aim for 50,000 units.
IMO is sending its training team into every Tesco Mobile store to support the launch and to provide training and product awareness for staff in-store and in call centres across the country.
“The IMO S2 should resonate with parents who have young children, and our partnership with monqi aims to help introduce mobile phones to their young families in a safe and intelligent way.”
The 4G handset runs on the Android 8.1 Go operating system and features a five-inch HD display with a 13MP rear camera and 5MP front one.
It has a 2,200mAh battery and is powered by a quad-core processor. It has 1GB of RAM, plus 16GB of internal memory.
Our Perspective, which represents monqi as its global sales arm, chose IMO as its hardware partner.
Our Perspective director Jason Kemp said: “This is all about a new target market and is a brand new market opportunity for monqi. We were looking for a hardware partner that is reputable, and IMO were open to working with us and the software that monqi can provide.”
