Vertu Mobiles

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Vertu

Type Wholly-owned subsidiary of Nokia

Founded 1998

Headquarters Church Crookham, Hampshire

Key peopleAlberto Torres (CEO)

Frank Nuovo (head of design)

Industry Consumer electronics

Products Luxury mobile phones

Website http://www.vertu.com

A Vertu Signature mobile phone

Vertu is a British-based manufacturer and retailer of luxury mobile phones. The company is

an independently run, wholly-owned subsidiary of the Finnish mobile phone manufacturer

Nokia.

Contents

[hide]

y 1 Concept

o 1.1 Distribution

o 1.2 Concierge Service y 2 See also



y 3 References

y 4 External links

[edi ] ept

The concept of the company is to make mobile phones in the same vein as l xury watch manufacturers like Rolex, I C and Patek Phili ppe. The most expensive model it has ever made is the Si nature Cobra, at US$310,000 (~¼217,000); the most expensive regular model is the Signature Diamond at US$88,000 (~¼62,000). Pr ices star t at $5,100 for theConstellation model.[1]

Other models include: Ascent, Constellation and Ascent Ti. The standard Ascent modelscome in many different colours, such as: Black, Brown, Red and Orange. The Special Editionmodels come in hite, Azure Blue and Pink. The Summer Collection models come inStrawberry Red and hite. Var iations of the Ascent also include the RaceTrack Editions andFerrar i Edition. The Ascent is no longer being produced by Ver tu, though the Constellation,

Ascent Ti and Signature are still in production.

The mobiles themselves are made from very expensive mater ials such as gold, sapphire (for the mobile screen), rubies (for the bear ings) and f ine leather . Each mobile is hand-made in itsfactor ies in Church Crook ham, Hampshire, England.

The company is headquar tered in the United K ingdom with off ices in Par is, New York , LasVegas, Singapore, Tokyo, Frankfur t, and Hong Kong. Ver tu's president and COO is PerryOosting, and the Pr inci pal Designer is Frank Nuovo. The company now has over 400employees.

[edit] Di tri ti

To keep the value of the brand, Ver tu mobiles are only available in its own branded stores,concessions in leading depar tment stores such as Harrods and Selfr idges in London, and other author ised retailers. Ver tu¶s f lagshi p store opened in 2002 in Par is and then soon af ter inSingapore. There are now over 600 retail outlets.

[edit] Concierge Service

One of the services when one acquires a Ver tu mobile, is a year free concierge service called"Ver tu Concierge", operated by Ten UK in London. It is accessed through a special button,

the "Concierge key" at the side of every phone.

This 'hot key' puts the user through to a team of lifestyle managers who can book servicessuch as gourmet dining, and luxury travel or accommodation around the clock.



abstract

Vertu, a subsidiary of Nokia, is a maker of luxury mobile phones. The case traces the beginnings of

the company and its growth. It describes the new product launches of the company, its target

markets, and the threats that the company faces. The case ends with a brief discussion on the future

prospects of the company.

Introduction

In August 2006, Ver tu, a maker of premiummobile phones and a subsidiary of Nok ia, thewor ld's largest mobile phone maker, announcedthat it was unable to meet the demand for itsluxury phones and would increase its productioncapacity in the near future.

The mobile phones, or personal communication

instruments, as they were referred to in thecompany's communications, were pr iced

between US$ 4,900 and US$ 50,000 (as of 2006). The phones were handcraf ted with high quality components including precious stones.The more expensive models were made of

platinum.

Ver tu had invested considerable money as well as time in conceptualizing and creating itsrange of luxury phones. These extremely expensive phones were pr imar ily targeted at youngand successful businessmen. Ver tu realized ear ly that mobile phones, far from being just acommunication device, would also come to ref lect the personality of their owners. hile theVer tu phones evoked a good response, some analysts doubted whether the interest would besustained.

As the product proved successful, the number

of imitators was expected to grow quick ly. Andsure enough, companies like Mobiado3 and

mainstream players like Motorola4, Samsung

5,

and LG6 launched high-end mobile models in



the mid-2000s.

Even as Ver tu phones won praise for their design and build, they were cr iticized for being

technological laggards. However, companyoff icials did not see this as a drawback,

explaining that a typical Ver tu customer did not place as much emphasis on cutting-edgefeatures as he did on design and high valuecomponents.

Background Note

Ver tu, headquar tered in the UK, was established by Nok ia as a subsidiary in 2002. Although the

idea to create exclusive luxury phones was f irst conceived by Frank Nuova (Nuova), the chief designer of Nok ia, in 1995, it was several years

before it took shape.

"In 1995, Frank Nuovo, the chief designer of Nok ia, had an idea that mobile communicationdevices would one day be available not just inthe mass market, but also in the luxury market.That idea was discussed and talked about for several years,"7 said Nigel Litchf ield(Litchf ield), president, Ver tu. In 2000, Nok ia

began ser ious effor ts in this direction.

"Just over two years ago, we secretly set up a company to (really) see if there was a business

case,"8

said Litchf ield in 2002. The existence of Ver tu was f inally revealed in Par is, thecenter of high fashion, in January 2002. The f irst Ver tu phone, the Signature was launchedthe same year (Refer Exhi bit I for a photograph of the Ver tu Signature).

What goes into Virtu

The Ver tu Signature was designed to be a union of craf t and technology. The phones wereassembled entirely by hand in spotless workshops. Each phone had around 400 components(Refer Exhi bit II for a photograph of the components) and underwent str ingent quality

checks.

The casing came in four mater ials - stainless steel (surgical grade), 18 carat yellow and/or white gold, platinum, and diamond-encrusted. The Ver tu Signature phones had angular scratch-proof screens made of 69.25 carats of sapphire crystal.

The keys were made of precision engineered stainless steel and were set on jewel bear ings."Underneath each of these keys is a ruby bear ing. The customer can press these keys over f ive million times and still get the same consistent, positive response. If you take an ordinary



mobile phone, once you get beyond half a million key presses, you will star t to f ind some problems," 9 said Litchf ield

Vertu Collections

Th

e Ver tu Ascent Collection, launch

ed in January 2004

, was also made of stainless steel,ceramic, sapphire crystal, Liquidmetal alloy, and leather. The collection was inspired byhigh-performance luxury cars...

The Concierge Service

Every Ver tu phone came with a Ver tu Concierge. hen a person bought a Ver tu phone,he/she automatically became entitled to use the concierge service...

Who Buys the Vertu?

hen the Ver tu Signature was launched, it became popular with celebr ities such as DavidBeck ham, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Madonna.However, pr iced as they were between US$5,650 and US$ 26,550, the phones were out of the reach of the merely 'wealthy' - only thesuper-r ich could afford them.

"These are people who buy the best qualitywatches, the best quality fashion devices," saidLitchf ield. Initially, owing to its steep pr ice,even the team at Ver tu were not sure what the

demand for the phones would be. "I can't giveyou a (market) f igure because nobody knows,"said Litchf ield...

Threats

Ver tu, by vir tue of the fact that it was a category creator, faced no competition at f irst. "That'sone of the exciting things -we are creating a new market. The market size will be determined

by the sor ts of products and services that Ver tu offers because we don't believe we have anyreal competition today,"...

Outlook

In 2005-06, Ver tu expanded its presence,especially in Asia. "In Asia, the buying patternsand replacement cycles for handsets are veryhigh. Mobile phones also serve as statussymbols, especially in countr ies like Singaporeand Hong Kong, so there is a lot of potential,"



said Bryma Ma, senior manager, IDC, a market research f irm.

The year 2006 was a high growth year for Ver tu.

"The f irst four months of the year (2006) wehave tr i pled our revenues, and we are on the

track to at least double the size of the company,maybe even tr i ple...

Vertu: The phone that says bling bling

Pr ices star t at £2,900 ± and you don't even get a camera. So why is the Ver tu walk ing off theshelves? Tim alker meets the man who makes the wor ld's most ostentatious mobiles

Wednesday, 26 November 2008

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Ver tu's Frank Nuovo holds his latest baby, the Boucheron 150, which has been scul pted from

a single slab of gold to resemble a jewel

y enlarge

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Frank Nuovo cradles in his palm what is, if not the wor ld's most costly mobile phone, then per haps its most elegantly conceived. It's the Ver tu Boucheron 150, designed by Nuovohimself, a dapper, ser ious Californian whose passion for his product is entirely unapologetic.Former ly head of design at Nok ia, he is the founder and chief designer of Ver tu, the wor ld'sleading maker of luxury mobile phones.

It's 10 years since Nuovo, who is 47, set up Ver tu, and six since the f irst Ver tu phone, theSignature, went on sale in Helsink i for an eye-water ing ¼24,000. Despite the global f inancial

maelstrom, the company, a subsidiary of Nok ia, is thr iving. A 10th-anniversary edition of theSignature range has just been launched, and though Ver tu phones are produced by 400 staff at

an atelier in Hampshire (each handset has a plate engraved with the signature of its creator),expansion continues apace; there will be 50 stand-alone Ver tu stores wor ldwide by the end of



next year, from Las Vegas to Tokyo. The latest opened in London's Old Bond Street last week.

"It was passion that star ted Ver tu," says Nuovo. "I looked out into the wor ld and saw that

every other functional object had made the adventure from pure function to f ine craf t. eresisted using the word 'luxury' for our f irst two years. e saw our phones as high-craf t,

precision 'instruments of communication'. But we had to star t calling them luxury mobile phones so that people would understand what we were talk ing about!"

It's in the basement of the Old Bond Street store that Nuovo now stands, dabbing at his latest creation with a polishing cloth, concerned that he may have lef t a f ingerpr int on itsshimmer ing gold carapace. Designed to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Boucheron,the renowned Par isian jewellery house, the one-off Boucheron 150 has been craf ted (over 2,200 man hours ± 1,000 for cutting to shape, 700 for polishing, 500 for assembling) toresemble a jewel, though it is, in fact, a single slab of scul pted gold.

"Michelangelo had teams of people hel ping him to carve," Nuovo explains. "They were under

contract to produce a work of ar t sponsored by someone. There were no watches or cars, so

the luxury of the day was ar t. Luxury is about those with means suppor ting the craf tsmen andar tisans of the wor ld. People think these objects just appear in the store. They don't consider all that must happen before that ± for any object, let alone one so f inely craf ted."

The Boucheron 150 comes in a varnished-walnut music box made by the Swiss companyReuge. (The charger is in there, too, couched in splendid leather, just in case anyone actually

buys the thing and wants to put it to use.) It has a crystal-clear r ingtone composed by Dar ioMar ianelli, who won an Oscar for the Atonement soundtrack. If you're look ing for aChr istmas gif t for the man who has everything ± and you happen to have rather a lot yourself

± then look no fur ther.

Nuovo prefers to avoid too much tawdry talk of pr ice tags, but if the unique 150 isn't his most expensive creation to date, then that would be the Ver tu Signature Cobra, which comes coiledin a bejewelled snake (two diamonds, two emeralds, 439 rubies), cour tesy of Boucheron. It'sattractive, if you like that sor t of thing, and wor th somewhere in the region of £170,000.

If your pockets aren't quite deep enough to purchase the Cobra, then the Ver tu Ascent, which chief engineer Hutch Hutchison descr i bes as the company's "entry level" model, retails at amodest £2,900. It may not have much of the bling expected by the average mobile-phone user (no camera, no Bluetooth wireless), but it boasts rather more timeless touches of quality: made from ceramic, stainless steel and a durable alloy called Liquidmetal, the Ascent isf inished with hand-sewn leather and a scratch-proof sapphire crystal screen. Ver tu now hascompetition in the luxury phone market that it created, but the company's USP remains its

personal "concierge" service, accessed by the "concierge button" on the side of each Ver tu phone, which puts its owner through to a team of hel pers.

" e're about creating the very best of something, not the latest thing," says Nuovo. " e'renot talk ing about a multimedia functionality device here. e already have what might becalled the 'traditional' mobile phone, which does voice, text, email and surfs the web. But the'smar t phone' is still a developing category. hen it's a mature technology, we'll make thosemoves."



There's an undoubted beauty to Nuovo's designs. The or iginal Signature phone was inspired by "the f ine watches of the wor ld"; the gleaming chrome curves of the Ascent were inspired

by "the f inest luxury European spor ts cars"; the Constellation, Ver tu's third model, wasinspired by "the shapes and forms of vintage aircraf t". There's a set of Ferrar i special-edition

Ver tus, too, which have silver Ferrar i stallions gracing every surface, and Eighties-rock r ingtones composed by Dave Stewar t.

Still, it's all very well compar ing a phone to a Michelangelo, but in Florence you can feast your eyes on his David vir tually free of charge. Nuovo's "scul ptures", on the other hand, areconf ined to the pockets of the r ich. "People have celebrated watches and jewellery for a longtime, and no one is ashamed of that," Nuovo argues. "Traditionally, when you graduate, youmight be given a f ine watch." hy not, his think ing concludes, a Ver tu?

"The exclusivity of the product is organic ± it costs a cer tain amount to make this product andget it out into the wor ld. Imagine this was a wor ld without beautiful things, where we saidmediocr ity was just f ine and we never tr ied to make aspirational products. It would be prettydarned dull. You don't not make a f ine car because it's too good. That's creative oppression.

"Our customers are for tunate enough to have the means to suppor t craf tsmen. Thank Godthere are those people, because they're suppor ting the hundreds who make the object ± be it aleather bag, a Ferrar i or a Ver tu."

Nuovo doesn't hide his own love of high-end bling; although he's dressed head-to-toe in black, he toys with the Boucheron "Quatre" r ing on his f inger ("made from four colours of gold"), and casually mentions his Porsche. Yet he is also well aware of the mass market, andfar from shy about his huge inf luence on it. For it was Nuovo who championed the layout of the standard Nok ia keypad in his design-chief role between 1995 and 2005, and Nok ia still owns Ver tu. "Our mission at Nok ia was to make extraordinar ily high-performance productsat the most inexpensive cost possi ble," he says. " hen I lef t in 2005, there were over a

billion phones out there with my impr int on them. Now it's probably well over two billionacross the globe. So I don't make any apologies for mass-market think ing."

The relationshi p between the two companies is mutually benef icial. The technology in aVer tu comes from Nok ia. And, Nuovo explains, "Ver tu is like a Formula One team for

Nok ia. e have enr iched Nok ia's knowledge of mak ing mass-market products, hel ping themto learn things about design, manufacture, retail and service."

Though he resists descr i bing his customers as "recession-proof", Nuovo admits that the Ver tudemographic may be less affected by the credit crunch than others. And when you're wealthyenough to buy one Ver tu phone, you're probably wealthy enough to buy two: " e have manyloyal return buyers. Some people come into the store and are upset when we don't have

anything new."

Vertu Mobiles

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