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Luxury Phone-maker Vertu Collapses (bbc.com)
A British-based company that made smartphones costing thousands of pounds will be liquidated after a plan to save it failed. From a report: Vertu was known for its high-end, jewel-encrusted handsets, but recently faced financial difficulties. The company's liquidation will result in the loss of nearly 200 jobs. One technology analyst said Vertu would have faced competition from companies offering to customise other smartphones with precious materials. Vertu phones carry hefty price tags -- its Signature range starts at 11,100 pound ($14,350) and one model featuring 18-carat red gold costs 39,100 pound ($50,600). When contacted by the BBC, an external spokesman for the firm said: "Well it's gone into liquidation and I'm not being paid by them any more."
"HA! HA!"
- Nelson Muntz
Even worse, by the time the company got done designing then implementing the gold-plating and vajazzling, the phones were already obsolete, and the final nail in the coffin was the ability to produce replacement backs and cases by the tens of thousands in whatever color or print or texture that the user wanted, purchasable for $10-$100 each.
The only people that would buy what this company made are buying for the express purpose of showing off. Even among the rich that number might be fairly small as you have to be obscenely rich in order to spend money that frivolously without it starting to affect your bottom line, and even then not all obscenely rich people spend like drunken sailors on shore leave.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
No matter how much money you have; you'd have to be a real pretentious douche bag to buy one of these. And a real pretentious douche bag to sell one of these.
If I saw someone using one of these there would definitely be an urge in my gut to punch him in the face.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It was the concierge button. THAT was what made Vertu great. You push a button, you're instantly connected to a personal concierge who would arrange whatever you needed. Dinner reservations, flights, flower delivery, dry cleaning, etc. The Vertu phone came with a lifetime concierge-on-demand service. What killed it was the expansion of Google Voice/Siri type apps and integration with other vendors. You no longer needed a human to do that for you...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
And nothing of value was lost.
n2ch
How long a contract do I need to sign to get a free one from Verizon?
6 months... ... your liver... both kidney's and your corneas.
"No matter how much money you have; you'd have to be a real pretentious douche bag to buy one of these."
So, their market was the extended Kardashian family? That's large enough that I don't see why they went out of business.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Lesson Learned: Gold plated commodity things are still just commodity things.
The other lesson learned: "Fast nickels are better than slow dimes." This was an extreme case of "slow dimes" for cellphones.
Grocery stores know that one. You can run on razor thin profit margins if, on the average, you turn over your entire stock every three days or so. 121 (a year's worth) cycles of compound interest at one percent will more than triple the money invested in the stock. (Multiplies it by almost exactly three and a third.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Douche bags are not rich, they only pretend to be so by showing off some false bling bling. This is why Vertu's shit didn't take off.
Real rich people tend to keep an eye on what they're spending money on. This is how they usually got rich. More revenue than expenses.
People that are actually rich just want the latest Android or iPhone. Their full time assistants buy it for them. They spend their money on other things that rich people appreciate, like buying power, acquiring competitor's companies, flying on private jets, etc. They don't need an app to dial a free assistant service, because even their private assistants have assistants. This was a phone marketed at people that want to pretend they are rich with their friends.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
+5 funny if I had modpoints!
sigh.
no no no no no...
Today's memesheet clearly lists "lazy millenials killing established businesses because the don't buy in to overconsumption" as the current paradigm.
Also. What the world needs now is more luxury products to pry open the 1%'s pocketbooks.
You can't have a consumer driven economy when consumers have no disposable income.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
That's $920k in assets, all of which can be paid off at $100k a year in 10 years, leaving $150k a year or $500 a day or $400 after the wine. Even a $5000 mattress is only $1.3 per day over these 10 years
That day's probably never going to come, sadly. The N900's hardware is getting too outdated now, I've resigned myself to the fact that I'll have to use a rooted Droid 4 with a Linux chroot as my next phone. After that I'm hoping to put desktop Linux on an Ockel Sirius A with a sliding keyboard.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Good, good. Let the hate flow through you.
Do you know where that eggs been?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Conversely, commodity things are no better with arab-approved bling-bling.
slightly ashamed to know this, but those 'fabletics' brand leggings are doing pretty well, she'll likely make more from that venture than her acting career.
Yoga pants sold columbia house style; god bless the USA.
Rich people have money. Poor people spend money. I'm always surprised by the things that people would rather have than money.
Even the pimps are getting replaced by the web.
Vertu has founded in 1998. They lasted pretty long. I would call them successful in the tech world.
$1.00 * 1.01 = $1.01 (first cycle) .. ..
$1.01 * 1.01 = $1.0201 (second cycle)
$1.0201 * 1.01 = $1.030301 (third cycle)
this can be simplified to 1.01^x where x is the number of times you run thru the cycle
$1.01^121 = $3.33 after 121 cycles
I wouldn't go for a punch in the face, but an "accident" whereby I knocked the phone to the ground.
Pretentiousness broken. My tears they fall.
BlameBillCosby.com
The exceptions are the children of the uber-wealthy. The ones that didn't have to work for the money and generally seem to make occupations of spending for its own sake.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
HUH? This is a Conway alternative fact (aka Trumpian economics)
They're not compounding 1% per year daily. They're compounding one percent per three days every three days for 121 cycles.
One percent a year compounded annually for 121 years would also yield $3.33. But grocery stores don't have to wait that long.
If that's "Trumpian economics" it looks like Trump understands it somewhat better. Maybe that's how he turned a million or so he got from his dad into 3.5 billion - and then spent about the price of a pleasure yacht on starting up a successful run for the US presidency.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If I saw someone using one of these there would definitely be an urge in my gut to punch him in the face.
You have issues, tbh
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Sounds as if you are pretty pretentious yourself.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
That's a lot of anger about someone else buying something. I think there's a word for that. Let's see...
Pretentious douchebag would be quite fitting to describe you.
Even then, a phone isn't exactly a conspicuous consumption device. From what I see, Louis Vuitton is making money hand over fit with their "Eye Trunk" case which goes for quad digits. A good iPhone case would have gotten more income than a phone. Especially if the case had a Bluetooth item with the concierge button or other niceties.
The problem is that Vertu wound up in a market that was "neither fish nor fowl". If they sold expensive, bespoke, phones designed from the ground up for the individual, similar to how Prevost and Newell make buses, and sold them for six digits, they would still be around. If they sold phones for 50-100% above the normal rate mass-produced (perhaps by some OEM/ODM out of Taiwan or Japan), and sold them in volume, they likely would have a decent business model. However, for a phone (which is a mass produced, disposable, gadget with an expiration date), it doesn't make sense to charge high prices.
Vertu might have been better off designing a "timeless" smart watch, where it would be self-winding, use a capacitor instead of a battery, using a very low power screen, minimizing the amount of apps (or complications) to save battery life.
Or, they could have done something unique: Vertu could have made a PDA which connects to the user's phone via Bluetooth. This device would not need to have state of the art stuff on it, but designed from the ground up for being timeless and elegant. That way, the "common" smartphone can remain in a pocket or purse, while the PDA, a status symbol, could be used. Then, Vertu could look at early PalmOS, which was designed to be simple, yet effective, and design a device around it, perhaps with the capacity for voice transactions (via Bluetooth like the HTC Mini). That way, they would have something unique to sell that would last a long time (when the smartphone gets tossed, re-pair with the new one, continue as before.)
Lesson Learned: Gold plated commodity things are still just commodity things.
Actual lesson learned: gold plated phones sell great until you switch over from Nokia to Android.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.