
Ask HN: Why is there no $10,000+ luxury smartphones? - Huhty
Tons of people are willing to spend thousands of dollars on fancy clothes, jackets, purses, sunglasses, etc. So why is there no ultra expensive (but also VERY POWERFUL) smartphones out there?
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tfitz237
Here you go: Phones that range from $13,300 to $31,700

[http://www.vertu.com/us/en/collections/signature/shop-
collec...](http://www.vertu.com/us/en/collections/signature/shop-collection/)

The most expensive phone on that page is $31,700:

[http://www.vertu.com/us/en/collections/signature/shop-
collec...](http://www.vertu.com/us/en/collections/signature/shop-
collection/red-gold-black-dlc/600724-001-01.html?cgid=12500)

I believe they come with their own concierge service.

~~~
notahacker
I can't help wondering whether the effect the design of those phones have on
the average person spotting them is less "wow, polished ceramic pillow, red
gold detailing and alligator-skin case" and more "wow, that guy over there
keeps bragging about how rich he is then pulls some cheap phone that looks
like the one I had in the late 90s out of his pocket"

Or maybe they're just way ahead of the curve when it comes to the inevitable
retro craze for turn-of-the-century phone design

~~~
Jugurtha
It doesn't matter, for several reasons:

Smartphones have no exclusivity or wealth signaling potential; both the rich
and the poor can afford one. They're basically the new feature phone. I don't
think anyone would brag about something everyone could afford. (i.e: no rich
person would brag about an iPhone).

Some of the most expensive things go unnoticed to the 'untrained' eye. It
might be by design in an inside joke spirit. Not many would recognize John
Lobb shoes, Scabal suits, or Patek Philippe watches.. I wouldn't, but some
would. They _do_ look good and have an appeal to the hacker inside everyone
who loves things well made, especially things _custom_ made. Bespoke shoes is
as 'hackery' as it gets.

> _Or maybe they 're just way ahead of the curve when it comes to the
> inevitable retro craze for turn-of-the-century phone design_

Vertu's design has been consistent over the years as far back as I can
remember.

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toufka
Because the price/capability curve over time for modern electronics is nowhere
near linear. So to get a new phone at the front of the capability curve is
very expensive, and will be considered nowhere near the front within a single
season. So your bang/buck ratio for spending that amount buying luxury just
doesn't go very far.

~~~
paulddraper
Exactly.

Compare that to a watch, clothes, or sunglasses, where an $X item today is the
same as an $X item next year.

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tschwimmer
Here's one for $16k USD: [http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/31/11818358/sirin-
labs-solari...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/31/11818358/sirin-labs-solarin-
privacy-smartphone-hands-on-photos)

The website is the most over the top displays of form over function I've ever
seen: [https://www.sirinlabs.com/](https://www.sirinlabs.com/)

~~~
euyyn
That sphere's awesome, though :D

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detaro
Luxury smartphones exist, but they are mostly variants of existing smartphones
with bling added (gold, diamonds, ...), I think sometimes sold with concierge
services and stuff like that. People don't care that much about technical
differences, especially since they wouldn't be all that large. Current top-of-
the-line smartphones already are pretty dang close to the maximum that is
technically possible at any given time. A few more extra features (stuff like
multi-sim, bigger memory) might work out, but that's not something people are
willing to pay a lot more money for.

------
dtnewman
1) It costs a lot of money to develop smartphones. To justify a higher price,
you'd need to spend a lot of money on people to develop a better phone. It's
almost certain that you won't be able to compete with Google or Apple on
research budget since there are a limited number of people willing to spend
$10,000+ on a phone, so your market is gonna be small.

2) People don't want to switch ecosystems. Say you develop a new platform to
compete with Android and ios and you come up with something better (that's a
big if). Assuming only your $10k+ phones have that new OS, developers won't
want to make apps for your phone. So you'll end up needing to be compatible
with Android in order to get access to all of their apps. Most likely, you'll
end up just using Android like some Vertu phones do. And then people will
wonder why they are spending so much money on a phone that is basically just
an Android phone and does the same thing as any other Android phone. Maybe
you'll have slightly higher specs, but the flagship phones from the current
big companies already have specs that are high enough for most users.

3) Cellphones become outdated quickly. If I spend $10K on a phone, I'm still
not going to want to use it in 10 years from now. A lot of luxury items are
made to last for a long time. I have sunglasses (not particularly luxurious
ones) that are 12 years old. I'll concede that many luxury items are _not_
made to last long, but for many of them, there is at least a perception of
quality.

4) Cellphones stay in your pocket and aren't as visible as many luxury items
such as bags or clothing.

------
wodenokoto
An old watch doesn't become bad at telling time, so you can invest a lot of
money in it and keep it as jewellery for a long time.

A smart phone ends up being bad at being a smart phone after a few years. Apps
stop working, web pages start loading slowly etc.

So there is much more prestige in getting the new iPhone before your peers,
than owning an expensive-on-the-outside, but slow on the inside phone.

With that being said, there are companies that will tear your iPhone apart and
place it inside a gold enclosure and others that will sell extremely expensive
handsets. I tried talking to a jeweller about vertu phones back when they were
still Nokia phones, and he tried to explain to me that people who invest
~$15.000 in a phone don't care about screen resolution or OS versions. I
didn't understand why anybody would pay extra to get what was essentially a
2-3 year old.

------
RichardHeart
For the same reason there's not really any $10,000 cpu's, monitors, keyboards.
You can charge more, but you can't add much more value, and if managed to, you
might have to charge 100k. Some things are very very hard to make better. I
predict posts with laser projectors and extremely rare and marginally better
tech after this :)

~~~
wodenokoto
$100k watch doesn't tell time better than a $10 watch.

But phones, like watches are very much a fashionable accessory, so it should
be ripe for the same high-price segments as watches.

~~~
fileoffset
You may find that most, if not all 100k+ watches are full automatics of
varying complications. When someone makes a wholly mechanical smart phone,
then yeah, they will probably charge 100k for it ;)

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wmf
There are some bling-encrusted luxury phones like Vertu. In terms of power, it
isn't really possible to build anything more powerful than flagship phones.

~~~
noobermin
Took a look at those, they aren't very attractive.

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bsvalley
Because I don't think it would be a multi-billion $ business. It has to be
something more than just a smartphone.

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olegkikin
Because producing a custom powerful phone (not just adding diamonds) will
likely cost you much more than $10K per.

