Vertu is Dead

Can’t blame anyone for not noticing Vertu is gone, most of us probably don’t know anyone who owns one. :frowning:

Honestly, I was surprised they made it this long!

I remember a NBA player, Jalen Rose, saying that he bought a Vertu to show off but kept using his iPhone. It’s hard to build a luxury device when the core technology is changing so often.

It’s always felt like a relic of the “The Fabulous Life Of…” era on VH1. I specifically remember them talking up those phones as what you HAD to have to be like Brittany Spears, or Lindsay Lohan.

They made some cool stuff, and certainly pushed the limit of materials on personal electronics, but when the experience became more important than the device itself, Vertu was lost forever.

It makes me wonder why haven’t I seen someone take an iPhone apart and put it into a diamond encrusted 18 karat gold cover.

You aren’t looking hard enough.

$15million, please. iPhone 5, but whatever.

R

Instead of the epitome of luxury mobile phone brand it would have been great jewelry brand. Fate of Vertu was already decided earlier as the brand was sheer build quality driven as contrary to core technology driven.

Funny, I’ve never even seen a single Vertu in real life, only read about them.
I wonder if Apple will try to break its production into “mass” and “elite” - by doing what Vertu failed to accomplish - mix technology and quality in a luxurious way.

People are willing to pay for design, just not that much. I have seen a few, they are definitely very high end and very well built on the hardware side. Still there are plenty of opportunities for innovators to make use of the materiality of smartphones and intertwine that with the user experience.

Likely Apple would not do this. It is too early handled as an aftermarket modification or case… I could see them doing a special material version like they did with the apple watch, but that is about as far as I would guess they would be willing to go.

I’d say they already have tried this. $1000+ iPhone 7/X and the plastic iPhone C…

R