The Vertu Ti has been revealed today and whilst the smartphone looks like the Ferrari of the mobile world, it’ll actually cost you the price of a small car to own it.
To be exact, the Vertu Ti has a starting price of a whopping £6,700 and for your money you’d be expecting this phone to do amazing things. Well here’s the problem… it doesn’t!
The Vertu Ti only runs Android Ice Cream Sandwich for a start. The 8MP camera isn’t anything to write home about either, plus add in a 1.7GHz dual-core processor, a 3.7″ display and a 1250mAh battery and really all you’ve got is a bog standard smartphone.
So why is the Vertu Ti so expensive? The look of the phone plays a big part – it has a titanium body and sapphire crystal display. Also the Vertu offers one button access to a 24 hour concierge service, just incase you ever need to know where you can grab a bite to eat at 3am.
As classy as it may look, sadly the Vertu Ti is doomed to obscurity.
I, like you, think this sort of thing is pretty stupid, but I think there’s some money to be made, unfortunately. I couldn’t even begin to estimate what their business model must look like, but I imagine it involves building a unique phone for a small amount and selling it for a large amount.
The watch industry has been doing this for years though. I had a look through a jewelry shop window the other day, and there were some quite cheap looking plastic digital watches selling for around the 3 grand mark. It didn’t have any fancy materials in it, from what I could see. It didn’t do anything too special. I think it was just a designer brand. That’s it. Maybe that’s where they’re trying to go with phones. Makes sense, because obviously there are loads of people stupid enough to buy them.
Plus, because of the huge margins, they only need to sell one or two to keep the company going! Call it an extreme version of Apple’s sales model!
These devices are aimed at those with more money than sense. Footballers and their bimbos spring to mind. I went to Manchester a couple of years back and had a mooch in the Trafford centre, it is the only place I have ever seen Vertu devices on sale, and they were in a jewellers!