Vertu closes the production of phones

The British company Vertu , known for its super-expensive smartphones, will be eliminated after a failed attempt to save it. The Financial Times publication reports that a company with a debt of £ 138 million ($ 178.834 million) will be closed with a loss of about 200 jobs. For many, the news came as a surprise, considering that a technology exchange deal was recently signed with the Chinese giant TCL.



Some technology analysts are confident that Vertu would in any case be faced with competition from companies offering conventional smartphones with precious stones and metals. The price tag on Vertu phones started at 14 thousand dollars. Some of the latest models from this manufacturer used synthetic sapphires to create the display - the ones that Apple considered for its iPhones, but later refused due to manufacturing problems. It is difficult to work with this material, but its main practical advantage is that such a screen is difficult to break.



Vertu appeared in 1998 as Nokia’s ultra-premium division. As the market share was lost, Vertu's parent company became more independent. By 2012, the company was sold to the EQT VI group - a private equity company that owned Vertu until 2015. Then the business of luxury smartphones was bought by Hong Kong company Godin Holdings, which at that time was suffering from its own financial crisis.







In 2017, a Turkish businessman, Murat Hakan Uzan, bought a manufacturer for £ 50 million ($ 64 million), promising to help him develop his potential. The Financial Times reports that Uzan tried to buy Vertu from the board for £ 1.9 million, but the offer was rejected. Sources close to the businessman claim that he intends to preserve the brand, technology and licenses, and also plans to "rebuild" the phone manufacturer. But this does not mean that the jobs of people who collect devices at the British Vertu factory will be restored.



Vertu is not the first manufacturer of premium phones that has tried to survive in the world of smartphones, especially in the past few months. Sirin, who boasted about Vertu's ultra-protected gold youth, stopped producing devices in less than a year. Obviously, in a world dominated by Apple, Samsung and BBK (the owner of Oppo, Vivo and OnePlus), a mid-range smartphone covered with crocodile leather is not the most reasonable investment.