President Chain Store Corp (統一超商), operator of the 7-Eleven convenience store chain, said yesterday it sought to attract 150,000 mobile subscribers by the end of this year after joining the nation’s already saturated telecoms market earlier this year.
President Chain, a retailing chain of Uni-President Group (統一集團), the nation’s biggest food conglomerate, said 50,000 users had subscribed to its system after launching pre-paid mobile services on a mobile network leased from Far EastTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信).
Far EasTone is the nation’s No. 1 pre-paid mobile service provider, with 1.3 million users.
“The performance beat our expectations,” said James Hsieh (謝健南), a vice president at President Chain, in a press briefing. “We are making profits from the new mobile business.”
President Chain is the only local convenience store operator to have won a license to offer mobile services. Consumers can subscribe to a pre-paid mobile service from President Chain at its 4,800 outlets nationwide.
President Chain aims to become the nation’s fourth-biggest pre-paid mobile service provider within a year, behind the nation’s three main telecoms carriers, Hsieh told reporters.
This year, pre-paid mobile users are expected to grow 1.8 percent to 2.7 million from last year’s 2.65 million, recovering from a slump four years ago after the government barred the sale of pre-paid cards at convenience stores, President Chain said.
“We want to offer simple mobile services without contract or a fixed monthly fee,” Hsieh said.
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