Luxury Phone Maker Vertu gets acquired for £50 million

If you are fond of luxury items and especially luxury phones, then you surely might have heard about the company called Vertu. Vertu is one of those companies which is known for manufacturing insanely expensive phones. The unique material choices are what makes those phones expensive as you can get them in Gold, Silver, leather finish and what not. This is what the company is known for and users buying these phones certainly don’t care about hardware or the software inside. It’s all about that looks!

However, if you somehow missed the news, then be informed that this company has now been acquired by Turkish mogul Hakan Uzan. Do make a note that this is not the first time that this company has been acquired by someone. However, this time Uzan has allegedly paid £50 ($61) million to get his hands on this company, and it looks like the company will likely keep its headquarters in the U.K. It has also been reported that Uzan comes from the controversial Turkish family that has been found with Nokia in court as well. The family was accused of fraud after defaulting on a loan from Motorola and Nokia. Do make a note that Nokia is the original founder of Vertu.

The Uzan family was once a proud owner of a bank, a broadcaster, a mobile operator, etc. However, sadly all were seized in 2003 as the family was found guilty. Mr. Uzan is now taking over the company with a £53 million loss on top of a total revenue of £110 million. He stated that “Vertu is a powerful brand with an acknowledged market niche and he is looking forward to working with the team and provide the investment to enable Vertu to realize it’s full potential.”

Also, it has been reported that the company sold a total of around 450,000 Vertu phones in the year 2015 and that too with an average price of about $6,000. Yes, $6,000 is a lot of money for a phone but that is not the most expensive phone that Vertu sells. The most expensive phone sold by Vertu costs up to £40,000. At the price at which Mr. Uzan acquired the company, he could have picked up around 10,000 averaged-priced Vertu phones instead, but that would not have been a wise move, obviously.

As mentioned earlier, this is not the first time that this company is getting acquired. Earlier, when Nokia had its hands on the brand, it was picked up by Swedish equity fund, EQT in 2015. Shortly after that it was bought by a Chinese fund and now yet again we are seeing acquisition. With that said, let us know what do you think about this acquisition and also what do you think about the brand itself. Stay tuned to PhoneRadar for more info like this.