{"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":"https:\/\/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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vertu has wound up. Was this a case of a string of management failures? This company started at Nokia [sic] 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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1503],"tags":[173,1897],"class_list":["post-3385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-management","tag-vertu"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4vJD-SB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3385"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3386,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3385\/revisions\/3386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}