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.
Comments
It's not about technology, it's about psychology.
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.
Edit: formatting, typo.
> your phone that costs more than many people make in a month
Hah! Try a year/ten years. Hell, most Greeks make less than 8k/yr, and have for quite a while.