Ask HN: Why is there no $10,000+ luxury smartphones?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13412503

by Huhty • 10 years ago

8 18 10 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

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?

detaro• 10 years ago

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.

wmf• 10 years ago

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• 10 years ago

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

olegkikin• 10 years ago

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

tschwimmer• 10 years ago

Here's one for $16k USD: http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/31/11818358/sirin-labs-solari...

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

euyyn• 10 years ago

That sphere's awesome, though :D

toufka• 10 years ago

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• 10 years ago

Exactly.

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

zazpowered• 10 years ago

Yep that's the biggest reason

RichardHeart• 10 years ago

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 :)

wodenokoto2• 10 years ago

$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• 10 years ago

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 ;)

tfitz237• 10 years ago

Here you go: Phones that range from $13,300 to $31,700

http://www.vertu.com/us/en/collections/signature/shop-collec...

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

http://www.vertu.com/us/en/collections/signature/shop-collec...

I believe they come with their own concierge service.

notahacker• 10 years ago

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• 10 years ago

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.

wodenokoto2• 10 years ago

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.

dtnewman• 10 years ago

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.

bsvalley• 10 years ago

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

Ask HN: Why is there no $10,000+ luxury smartphones?

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