Like that "I Am Rich" iPhone app that cost $200 and did nothing but display a glowing red icon, expensive but ultimately useless novelties have always perplexed me. They're amusing from a distance to those of us without buckets of spare cash, but does anyone actually buy them? Apps may not cost much of anything to make, but what about real, tangible goods with production costs? Hundred-dollar computer cables must have some kind of market for companies to keep making them and stores to keep selling them. $20,000 Nokia handsets must have at least one buyer in the world, or else Vertu wouldn't exist. 

Vertu is an offshoot of Nokia that makes cheap, clunky, ugly luxury phones. They're so far behind the times that they only just unveiled their first touchscreen handset. Everything else has tiny screens and huge buttons inlaid with gold and platinum and other luxurious but useless materials. There's a more angular BlackBerry clone in there too, I guess, but for the most part Vertu's line merely includes dressed-up versions of the old Nokia phones we had in high school. I don't even think they all have cameras. I couldn't tell you what kind of OS they run because it's probably the bare minimum still running on those disposable pay-as-you-go Nokias. Someone even took a Vertu Signature Dragon phone apart to discover that it's exactly the same as a $20 baseline Nokia inside. Yet these things are made in factories, advertised and presumably sold for thousands of dollars.

But to whom? Most people with the money to procure one of these atrocities prefer to spend it on things of actual value, like cars or good clothes or private jets. What kind of person would actually shell out for a phone that's technologically-speaking of very low quality?

My guess would be that their target market is getting up there in years. Young people know the difference between a Nokia and an iPhone. Young people with money tend to go for the latter. Even those who've reached middle age aren't going to drop a few grand on a platinum handset. It's got to be those folks so old as to be delirious, nearing senile, with no idea what to do with all the wealth they've accumulated. Someone tells them that they need a luxury phone and they happily agree. They use it. They feel good about themselves for the years they've got left to be alive. Meanwhile, the rest of us balk at a truly insidious tech brand.