I genuinely can't see why anyone would pay that for a handset. They are an icon of conspicuous consumption, nothing more.
Regarding the OS choice, they are right about market share which is why they were on Symbian and are now on android. Only time will tell where they end up.
If you're the target market for this phone you don't care much about the functionality, what you care about is that other people can see that you have so much money that you can carelessly throw around your phone that costs more than many people make in a month. It's all about perception.
Note that an important factor is that your peers have to know that the phone is prohibitively expensive. If they don't the point is lost. This is also why superyachts are so popular among the ultrarich. Everyone knows that they are crazy expensive to buy and maintain, and so they know you have the money to do so.
Douglas Adams has an unparalleled quote about the psychology behind it - "No expense had been spared to give the impression that no expense had been spared" This is also the only instance I've ever seen of recursion being used in fiction :-)
This isn't expensive enough to be actually exclusive, I'm guessing they're mostly preying on people with upper-middle class incomes and massive amounts of status anxiety.
I doubt they even make good bribes, as compared to other things you get for the price they're hard to show off, don't hold value over time, and are too easily traced.
>I'm guessing they're mostly preying on people with upper-middle class incomes and massive amounts of status anxiety
Indeed, especially so if the culture around them promotes this type of anxiety. You'd be surprised by how many people living in big cities of the former Soviet Union purchase used Vertu phones or outright two-SIM fakes. A lot of cell phone repair kiosks, especially those specializing in Nokia phones, have a "Vertu Repair" sign hanging outside. Now that the iPhone is supplanting Vertu as a major status symbol this trend has been on a decline but the sings and the fakes are all still there.
On an semi-unrelated note, creating a no-nonsense port of CyanogenMod or, better yet, MUIU for Vertu phones might make for an amusing art project.
Despite what Wikipedia says, most Vertu phones sold in the past weren't smartphones (unless you consider a personal concierge a kind of Siri); they were powered by Nokia's Series 40 firmware and had tiny 2" screens much like more mainstream Series 40 business phones, albeit covered with protective bling like sapphire glass. Apparently they still promote those on Vertu.com under the name Ascent. Nokia had just started transitioning Vertu phones to modern, touch-enabled Symbian with Constellation phones when they sold their Vertu arm to EQT.
People that buy these phones likely already have a concierge service from at least one of their credit cards, their place of residence, their country club, their airline, or whatever else. The phone coming with a concierge service is a little in-joke: the point is that you have it, and John Q. Public doesn't even know it exists.
It's hard to appreciate unless you get to hold one in your hand and play with it. The phones are exceptionally well made - not just robust but well crafted. The sound reproduction from the external speakers is pretty amazing too - I'd quite happily listen to music playing on it.
I do not know if Vertu was ever run at a profit, but, evidently, their new owner thinks it is possible.
The future prospects for Vertu are probably on an upward trend. If they can keep the software on their devices updated, a nice Android phone should have a five year lifespan before it is hopelessly out of date and unable to run new versions of the OS or lack the peripherals to support new features.
The size of phones, and screen resolution might be stabilizing. Several years of incremental improvements to power efficiency and other parameters will still add up to obsolescence. But, eventually, phones may become more like wristwatches. I have worn the same watch for more than 20 years, and it was made to last.
While I can appreciate the irony, they claim to be making a practical decision. Since the device is not disposable, and since Windows doesn't yet hold the market share that makes them feel warm and fuzzy about the long term ... Android.
Because Symbian before it was associated with luxury? What does hardware have to do with the OS anyway? Would Android on iPhones be less luxurious? If so, why? Android looks 10x better than the Symbian Vertu used in the passed.
They can't licence iOS and Symbian is at end-of-life. So the choice was between Windows Phone or Android. Since neither of these are particularly associated with luxury, the decision was presumably made using other criteria such as ecosystem size and brand recognition.
Regarding the OS choice, they are right about market share which is why they were on Symbian and are now on android. Only time will tell where they end up.