Retailing giant Tesco (where one in every seven pounds in the UK is being spent) has always been fairly active in mobile: it runs an MVNO (on the O2 network) and stocks lots of phones. It had also recently become a seller of the iPhone, yes, just in time for Christmas.

Alas, what was their bestseller? Not the iPhone but rather its opposite, an unbranded phone, the VX1 Party Phone (sic!), that retails for £18.99 and cannot do anything other than making phone calls and texts. It has a minute form factor though and, at that price, is nothing to collapse over should it get lost in the Christmas/New Year’s Eve party trouble. The phone comes SIM free but is unlocked, so everyone can use as a second one.

This little phone, manufactured by Verixas and distributed in the UK by Bluetooth firm BlueChipWorld (who do not manufacture distinct what we were being told), shifted 10,000 units in the two weeks at the end of December. Impressive stuff!

Besides all of the above, here’s where Tesco believes one of the reasons for its success may lie: it is, I kid you not, skinny jeans! Women (or, apparently, at least 69% of them) don’t like to carry handbags on a night out and cannot jam their normal “big” phones down the trousers of their super-slims. There you have it.