Nokia’s Bright Spot: Luxury Handset Maker Vertu

For his 27th birthday, Mohammed Al-Haj, a marketing executive in Abu Dhabi, hinted to his girlfriend that he wanted a new cell phone. He wasn’t after the latest Apple or Android device. He wanted a Nokia. Or rather, he wanted a Vertu, from the Finnish company’s luxury division. “It’s an accessory, part of my outfit,” Al-Haj says of his Vertu, with its keypad bordered by pavé-set diamonds. “People look at it all the time and say, ‘Wow, that’s a nice phone.’ It feels good.”

Although Vertu, started by Nokia’s then-chief designer Frank Nuovo in 1998, doesn’t release detailed sales figures, the unit has sold more than 300,000 phones in the past decade and seen “high double-digit sales growth” since the beginning of 2010, President Perry Oosting says. As Nokia sheds 7,000 employees as part of Chief Executive Officer Stephen Elop’s cost-cutting drive, Vertu’s staff of 840 has increased by more than 50 percent since 2009 and has outgrown its space in Church Crookham, England, where an expansion is under way. The division’s success is due largely to surging demand in the Persian Gulf, Russia, China, and other status-conscious emerging markets. The phones sell for an average of more than €5,000 ($6,800), but top-end models, such as those in Vertu’s Signature line, cost as much as €12,500.