Vertu's Aster Luxury Phone Tries to Survive on Style

A decade ago, Vertu made its name selling diamond-studded mobile phones to the nouveaux riches, especially in Asia, the Middle East, and Russia. Established in 1998 as a subsidiary of Nokia, the company was guided by the notion that a glitzy, jewel-encrusted cell phone ought to sell for as much as a Patek Philippe watch. In technology, though, Vertu phones lagged the competition. Its smartphones were pretty, but they weren’t that smart. The company’s flagship product, the Vertu Signature, still has a tiny screen and a button keypad. (Granted, a button keypad embedded with about 5 carats of rubies.)

By the time Nokia sold the company to buyout firm EQT Partners in 2012, Vertu had been mostly given up for dead; the major market analysts no longer keep tabs on it. In an April report on its portfolio, EQT said that Vertu’s sales totaled £192 million ($309 million) last year. The private company, which has 970 employees, wouldn’t disclose recent financials, saying only that it’s sold about 400,000 phones in the past decade and that sales have grown in most years.