{"id":3385,"date":"2017-08-08T09:37:32","date_gmt":"2017-08-08T01:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/?p=3385"},"modified":"2017-08-08T09:37:32","modified_gmt":"2017-08-08T01:37:32","slug":"vertu-no-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2017\/08\/08\/vertu-no-more","title":{"rendered":"Vertu no more"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vertu has wound up<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Was this a case of a string of management failures? This company started at Nokia [sic]<\/em> in 1998, then sold to a private equity firm EQT in 2012 for more than \u00e2\u201a\u00ac200m, then to an obscure Chinese company called Godin Holdings in 2015, then in March 2017 to Murat Hakan Uzan, a Turkish exile based in Paris. <\/p>\n

I have only ever seen one Vertu phone in the wild<\/a> (on a Cathay Pacific flight in business class; she had a 12.9″ iPad Pro as well). I did see a couple of their stores still open and very much trying to flog their wares (Oriental Plaza Beijing, amongst a few others; though I suspect they were not owned by Vertu directly or it takes some time for international foreclosure to work).<\/p>\n

FT’s Jonathan Margolis (“UK’s original consumer tech journalist”) sings praises for Vertu<\/a>. In 2012 he wrote an official company history that was never published as the CEO who commissioned it, departed (warning bells should have already gone off then). Vertu apparently did well<\/em> under Nokia’s stewardship, and even a year into their new owners; in total they sold 500,000 of their phones.<\/p>\n

What struck me as well is how many “luxury” companies bet on China. What China giveth, it can also taketh: “Restrictions on business gift-giving in China from 2014 onwards affected Vertu. The phones were a popular status symbol there. One small city, Wenzhou in Zhejiang province, had two Vertu stores.”<\/em><\/p>\n

I will respect this one brand aspect: Vertu in its pre-2013 heyday never gave away phones to celebrities.<\/strong> Why don’t more brands realise this? Consumers are getting smarter about product placements.<\/p>\n

They apparently also had a niche<\/em> userbase: Vertu phones from 2002 are said to still work. Updated versions of early voice-and-text-only models were its best-sellers until the end. Many Vertu owners used phones only for calls.<\/em> <\/p>\n

All in, its sad to see a brand I’ve known for so long, reach its demise. It seems like if you owned a Vertu, you were really part of an exclusive club, which is why I never saw many in the wild. <\/p>\n

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