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were unique. Vertu handsets, with their sapphire screens, ruby bearings supporting the key pads, diamond trimming and singlebutton summoning of a dedicated concierge service, were the first to target a mobile phone offering at the luxury market. It’s a niche that Vertu created, exploited and has successfully owned from its inception. It’s all been going well. According to CEO Alberto Torres, Vertu’s sales were up nearly 100% last year. By volume, these sales are now approaching 100,000 a year and, considering the pricing model in play, this all adds up to make Vertu one of Nokia’s most profitable segments. Last spring, however, as the world’s watch and jewellery makers descended on the Swiss town of Basel for the annual Baselworld trade show, it was clear that this niche was under attack from two separate types of competitor. In the platinum corner, fighting explicitly for the new wealth of developing markets, posed brands such as Goldvish, Gresso and Mobiado. These are brands that – unless you subscribe to the likes of Arabian Lady magazine (truly fine company for LBiQ to be keeping) – it’s unlikely you’ll ever have heard of. In the other, aiming for quality of experience as much as external glitz and glamour, stood the ‘fashion phones’ of familiar luxury brands such as Prada and Armani. Followers of the evolution of luxury brands will be aware of the four distinct cycles that luxury markets follow as they develop in tandem with local economies and consumer mindsets. The first three of these cycles, ‘Acquisitive Luxury’, ‘Inquisitive Luxury’ and ‘Authoritative Luxury’ are defined by an obsessive concentration on the nature of the product itself: its flamboyance; the craft and heritage of its workmanship; the most exclusive, rare and limited of editions. The fourth stage of ‘Meditative Luxury’, when the concept of luxury moves away from simple product to all-encompassing experience, is where the developed economies of Europe and North America are starting to find themselves. The world’s developing markets, however, are still moving through these first three cycles. It’s no surprise that one of these markets, Russia – where the value of the rapidly growing luxury goods market is forecast to reach $US 9 billion this year – is the explicit target of Basel’s platinum contenders.
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Ostentatiously heading the charge for ‘Acquisitive Luxury’ comes Geneva-based Goldvish, with a design aesthetic that favours the work of clumsy Fabergé-forgers over that of Apple’s rightly-praised Jonathan Ive. The highlight of the brand’s Baselworld exhibit, a solid gold, diamond-studded handset, was created in a luxuriously limited edition of three and flashes a level of bling that would bring a blush to even the most excessive of Snoop Dogg’s onstage pimp posse. It’s price tag? €1 million. Equally astonishing is Gresso, dangling not just handsets but luxury USB sticks and a €3,000 1GB MP3 player in front of a new breed of arriviste oligarchs. Like their phones, Gresso’s MP3 player is crafted in gold and rare African Blackwood, a wood that’s at the heart of Gresso’s textbook ‘Inquisitive Luxury’ proposition: “The history of phone began 200 years ago. So old is the wood the phone is made of. Every mobile phone is unique and singular. Two identical phones do not exist, as well as in the nature there are no two identical trees” (sic). Poor English and an equally poor understanding of chronology aside (the first patent for a telephony device was filed only 137 years ago in 1871) Gresso’s handsets, particularly the ‘intellectual’ Avantgarde model are definitely good-looking. They avoid the Goldvish overtones of downmarket lotterywinner chic, and – unlike the Vertu models which in the main restrict themselves to basic call and text functionality – boast a full range of modern smart-phone applications. The question you have to ask yourself, however, is whether this statement of personal triumph over the everyday and ubiquitous could ever be worth an entry-level price of €9,000 (rising to €30,000 for the limited edition Avantgarde Black Diamond)? Most bizarre of all is Mobidao. This Vancouver-based brand is one whose level of precise concentration on one particular sociodemographic niche can only be described as, well, military. Their flagship product for the Russian market is the Mobiado ‘Stealth’. Each of these handsets comes encased in ‘aircraft aluminium’ and bears the brand’s logo. And what a logo it is. Resembling a spikier version of Peugeot’s Lion, the ‘Carinthian Panther’ is at once both a heraldic device purloined from
12th century Slovakia and a popular symbol in the iconography of Eastern Europe’s fascist skinhead movement. The entire limited edition package couldn’t scream “ex-warlord made good” any louder unless it also offered an instant money-laundering and plastic surgery option. Instead of this there’s a more prosaic but equally appropriate piece of one-upmanship on Vertu: rather than a concierge service, Mobiado offers direct access to Blue Star Jets, the world’s largest private jet brokerage. Then there’s the surreal case of the brand’s 2006 launch of its own perfume, a joint venture with “Bissol, manufacturer of luxury perfumes”. Styling itself the “the first fragrance designed specifically for the sophisticated luxury mobile phone user”, the venture has whiff of bullshit or at least impressively knowing self-parody about it. A simple online diagnostic suggests that the ‘House of Bissol’ doesn’t exist beyond a website hosted on the same server as Mobiado.com. This sits uncomfortably with a brand distributed in the UK through ultra upmarket Sloane Square retailer Bamford & Sons, but such is the strange world of the Russian rich and their jewelencrusted journey through the first three cycles of luxury brand development. In more mature markets of much of Europe, the US and Japan, a different phase of the cycle has been reached – one that (hopefully, in LBiQ’s opinion) shows the way in which the ‘luxury’ end of the mobile market is likely to develop. And it’s all down to one brand: Apple. Apple’s products of recent years – culminating in the iPhone – demonstrate much of what it means to be a luxury technology brand in the 21st century. A world where even leaders in traditional luxury fields such as Bottega’s head designer Thomas Meier can recognise that “the real value (of luxury) is in design integrity and the value of the service that surrounds it.” With their own stores, and a clear ownership of the traditional luxury values of design heritage, craft and authenticity in the technology space, Apple’s concept of an experiential luxury – promoted so successfully by the iPhone – is one that focuses on the phone as an elegant enabler as much as an identifier of a particular lifestyle. It’s visually
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attractive (and, importantly, ‘feels’ good as well as simply looking good) but, however much it’s clearly designed to be shown off, the iPhone never aspires to being jewellery; rather it recognises that it’s simply an accessory to an individual lifestyle. What’s more, the lifestyle services provided through Apple’s content ecosystem (and make no mistake, portable, easy to use always-on internet is about as ‘lifestyle’ as it gets these days) are recognised by sophisticated consumers as being more important and valuable than any outward ostentation could ever be. Fast in the footsteps of Apple, recognising that design integrity matched with quality of experience is the key indicator of luxury in this sector, other high-end brands have attempted similar approaches and produced handsets at a clearly premium
the inquisitive and acquisitive, Vertu is no longer the only viable mobile option. Such consumers are also able to ignore the conventional designs of the LG and Samsung partnerships behind Prada and Armani and to look instead at the truly beautiful handsets of Bang & Olufsen and Japan’s Amadana. It’s into this design-oriented segment of the luxury phone market that yet another player – watchmaker TAG Heuer – is about to make its debut. Set for launch in the second half of 2008, and with what LBiQ understands to be a likely price tag of around €3,000 (placing it as a convenient halfway house between Vertu and the fashion phones), the handset is interesting in the sector in that it looks like uniquely playing to a brand heritage in chronometry. This is rumoured to be delivered through an innovative, angled design which allows the user to see the time
customise it. Ever since the media reported on P. Diddy acquiring a diamond customised iPod back in 2004, a high-end customisation market has sprung up around Apple devices with companies offering any crystal, gold or diamond extravagance you can imagine. This now of course includes the iPhone. This trend towards the combining of best-in-class mobile usability and experience with a conveniently sleek casing, well suited for extravagant expressions of affluent individuality, possibly signals the end of a brief but successful run for the other luxury players. Unless these brands invest as much in their insides as well as their outsides then – certainly within the UK and the US – their days seem numbered. In the brief meantime, however, the most extravagant end of the market still has furlined Russian pockets to take advantage of,
“ Rather than becoming heirlooms, these handsets will simply become antiques with no practical purpose.” pricing of €400-€650. These aim to stand above the crowd as much through innovative features as through simple price and presence of a designer label. The ‘diffusion line’ phones of both Armani and Prada, for example, mimic (to, respectively, a lesser and infinitely worse degree) the touch-screen interface of the iPhone. Armani’s Samsung-built handset even goes beyond Apple to offer touch-responsive haptic feedback to simulate a keypad. Both Armani and Prada also, like Apple, recognise in their pricing strategies that technology trends move faster than those of jewellery: keeping up with the latest iPhone over the next few years is likely to cost almost the same as a one-off entry level Vertu or Mobiado purchase. Functionality and experience aside, even the Frank Nuovo design styling of Vertu is under threat. For those wealthy aficionados with a mature love of design that transcends
on the top of the phone without removing it from his or (much less likely) her pocket. Whether this makes up for a lack of contemporary connectivity and features remains to be seen: where a Goldvish, a Vertu or even a TAG Heuer may be intrinsically valuable enough to be handed down through generations like a Patek Philippe watch, these days luxury through functionality (such as excellence in timekeeping) is ephemeral. As such, rather than ever becoming heirlooms, such legacy handsets will be simply antique and offer no practical value to a younger generation. Of course, however great the ‘true’ luxury to be experienced through feel and function rather than simply glamour and show, there will always be a need among those who can afford it to demonstrate that their superior wealth. So, if you’re among this number, how do you go about improving on your new iPhone? Well, quite simply, you
and Vertu continues to open stores apace in Saudi Arabia, a shift in market focus that began in 2005. Trends move fast and, as so often seems the case, the speed of all things mobile in particular can seem dizzying. It’s cold and wet outside Selfridges, but not far across Bloomsbury to the British Museum. Here, the quiet, upstairs Clocks and Watches gallery seems boisterous in comparison to the Vertu concession. Here, though, despite a similar presentation of exhibits under glass, these pieces aren’t here to be marvelled at for simple beauty, or even for their level of craftsmanship. Rather, the pieces on display have been selected to reflect their representation of technology’s peak at their time of creation. It’s advances in ability and not those in ostentation that mark the true progress of society. In comparison, the Vertu proposition doesn’t just seem simply dated – it seems forgettable.
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