Luxury Smartphones
It’s quite well known that many wealthy people have luxury watches, gilded my real 22 karat gold, some with real diamonds as well. Today, I am here to answer the question of will this “Luxury” category make it to phones?
The short answer is probably not and here’s what I think. Before you start saying that my answer is wrong and give me an example of companies who have mostly succeeded in doing this, yes. There are companies out that who have done this and have made some reputation doing so, they’ll never get far, at least of to be extended that some other companies like Samsung who makes great phones or Gucci who makes very expensive and fashionable clothes.
Vertu’s Failure
The perfect example for this would be Vertu (Check them out here). Vertu is an extension company to Nokia, kind of like Honor to Huawei, a different name but still under the same company. Just like Honor, Vertu specializes in one particular category. Unlike Honor, however, they specialize in luxury phones, not the young western audience. First, let’s talk about why Nokia decided to make Vertu. Their answer was simple and straight forward “If people are willing to spend 50 thousand dollars on watches, why not smartphones?” I think that makes a lot of sense, and I agree with their stands. Selling beautifully handcrafted just isn’t possible. While they were out there handcrafting phones, they were up against the giant that is Samsung and Apple. Whenever Vertu would finally Finnish their latest products, it’s already a few years behind in software and specs, which might not sound like a big deal but when you are dropping 50 Gs on a smartphone, having the latest and greatest is a minimum requirement. It was not long after the company was seriously in-debt and had to shut down.
Why Luxury Phones won’t Succeed
Another company that does similar things is a company called Goldgenie (Check them out here) Although they did find some success, they mainly sell luxury watches. Although they use machines to code the gold into phones and can mass-produce with the latest and greatest, they still don’t find major success. The main reason for this is because phones don’t last. Watches are made to last long, a minimum of 5 years. Phones on the other hand, last no longer than 4 before their battery degrade so much it’s almost unusable. When you drop 50 thousand and more on something, you expect it to have good enough quality to pass the test of time. Phones simply don’t, phones aren’t made to last. With 50 thousand dollars, you could buy 25 Samsung galaxy folds or just buy one and save the money to buy Samsung’s next flagship.
Is There No Way Out?
Before you completely give up the idea of luxury phones, I think that there is a way companies could sell luxury phones. Phones as a whole are more of a useful accessory than anything else, instead of selling luxury phones as that which would inevitably fail, they could sell them as fashion items. Hear me out, instead of dropping 50 thousand dollars on a smartphone which you probably won’t use because you don’t want to damage it, you can buy them as fashion items. Instead of having your luxury smartphones as your day to day driver, you can have it kind of like a necklace. It might not be useful, but are you trying to use it in the first place? Or companies could sell this like an ultra-expensive present, only for the riches of people.
