A quick lesson for anyone who wants to charge more:

http://www.vertu.com

Vertu make luxury smartphones. They probably don’t work better than any other smartphone. They don’t even need to work as well, since most people who buy them aren’t actually going to want a smartphone.

But they still cost about £7000, or about 16.5 iPhones.

They’re not trying to make a product that’s functionally better. They’re making one that:

  • is beautiful – they use gold, titanium and sapphire
  • is exclusive – you can only buy them at a few select locations
  • is a status symbol – the real reason for spending £7000 on one of these is being able to tell your friends you’re the kind of guy who can spend £7000 on a phone

More than anything else, they make the owner feel special, which is why they’re willing to spend that much on a phone.

There’s a lot of ways you can raise the value of your product, and only one of them is ‘more content’.