Print version of Fortune poses the question to its readers,
Are you ready for $10,000 smartphone?
Then teases us with a promise to answer
Who buys these phones and why?
Un-Fortun(e)-ately it is asking the wrong question and fails to answer who and why in its article. The digital version does not commit these mistakes opting for a benign informational title.
Asking its readers whether they are ready for $10,000 smartphone is wrong because that’s not whom Vertu is targeting. Opinions of the columnist or the comments of their readers are irrelevant. You should consider the possibility Vertu understands
- Who their target customers are? (Hint: Not Fortune readers, likely Richistan )
- What job are they hiring the luxury phones for? (Hint: conspicuous consumption)
- What is their phone’s competition? (Hint: not $650 iPhone, likely other luxury products)
- What their willingness to pay and wherewithal to pay are? (Hint: No pricing pressure here)
- What budget will customers pay from? (Hint: not their smartphone budget)
- How to reach them? (Hint: Not through Fortune magazine)
Fortune quotes McKinsey study (don’t you love those sentences that start with, “McKinsey study states …”),
brand needs to continue building on its heritage — highlighting the skill of its craftsmen
And guess what? Each Vertu phone is assembled by a single craftsman and Vertu shows it off to its customers at its manufacturing site.
You don’t believe $10,000 price tab is due to the labor cost, do you? Or that the craftsmen are more precise and produce better quality smartphone than the automated machinery that can assemble parts with near perfect precision? In this case McKinsey finding is partly correct.
It is true Vertu wants to highlight the skill of craftsmen but not to the target segment buying the watch but to us in the peanut gallery (and Fortune readers) how great the craftsmanship is so our admiration makes it worth it for those buying the $10,000 smartphone.
Finally an IDC analyst interviewed for the story states,
“even capturing 1% of the $295 billion global smartphone business would be an achievement for the firm”
If you followed the real target segment and understand the job they are hiring Vertu for you will see how irrelevant the size of smartphone market is or the share to capture. Vertu is not competing for the job of iPhone/Galaxy and customers are not paying for it from their budget for smartphone (as a utilitarian device).
The real market size should be based on luxury spend and the market share question is how much of that spend on Gucci handbags and Tiffany’s diamonds can Vertu capture.
The moral of the story is, your understanding of business opportunity, market size, market share, competition, pricing and likelihood of success will all be wrong if you do not start with customer segment and what they are trying to get done.
How do you size your business opportunity?
Iterative Path 