In November 2008, Nokia gave up Japan (where its market share hovered around a mere one percent for years) but now comes back with Vertu Japan [JP], its luxury brand. Vertu today opened a flagship store in Ginza, Tokyo’s upmarket area.

And the store looks absolutely great, both from the out- and inside. Customers can decide on three floors on which handset they want to spend too much money on. Each floor is devoted to the three Vertu handset lines available (Ferrari, Ascent and Signature). One floor even has a private lounge.

Decadent but cool. The only problem is Vertu will fail anyway.

Via IT Media [JP]

Ah, Russia. Home to a well-olied kleptocracy, Andrei Arshavin and, apparently, incredibly wealthy people who don’t know what to do with their money. (See: Roman Abramovich et al.) As such, we really shouldn’t be too surprised to see this new Vertu cellphone on a Russian luxury blog.

As you can see, it, the Vertu Boucheron 150, looks just like that other Vertu luxury phone, but this one supposedly has 3G connectivity. (Our cup runneth over!) It’s also rumored to cost something like $30,000, which is not even a week’s wages for certain footballers.

I don’t know, I’d complain about the unnecessary luxury of this, but the fact is there are people who buy things like this all the time, so good for Vertu for finding its niche. Meanwhile, I’m still buzzing along with a 2006 model piece of junk phone, so there’s that.

via Unwired View

Nokia, the world’s leading mobile phone maker, announced it would stop selling and marketing its handsets in Japan because the market share remained flat over too many years (hovering at around 1% vs. around 38% worldwide).

One of Nokia’s vice presidents said: “In the current global economic climate, we have concluded that the continuation of our investment in Japan-specific product variants is no longer sustainable.” They are right. Now is the right time to pull out of Japan without losing too much face.

And Nokia is very successful in China and India so they might not need the Japanese market at all (the plan to enter Nippon with their Vertu brand will not be abandoned). The company sold 38.5 million handsets in China in the first six months of this year alone.

Japan has always been a tough market crack for Nokia, the world’s biggest cell phone manufacturer. While the Finnish company boasts a 40 percent share of global handset sales, this figure has been steady at about 1 percent in Japan.

Now it has come to light that Nokia plans to launch an MVNO with Nippon’s No. 1 cell phone carrier Docomo starting in either February or March next year. Nokia will reportedly try to win in Japan via its Vertu brand of super-expensive phones. The company is planning to sell handsets priced between $16,000 and $50,000.

Although Japan is not as heavily affected by the current economic crisis as the USA, for example, Nokia’s move is a good example for poor timing. On top of that, the market for cell phones in Japan as a whole has been considerably shrinking in recent months.

I am not sure what Nokia’s final goal is here but they can’t expect to grow their market share by selling Vertu phones, not even in luxury-crazy and “rich” Japan. In case Japanese people want to stand out using “unusual” cell phones (of all things), they can get the iPhone or handsets like this one. Skimming the segment of super-rich cell phone users might not be enough to improve Nokia’s situation in Japan.

In this economy, nothing says “I got bailed out” like a Vertu Constellation covered with diamonds. This beautiful cellphone is perfect for calling up old Lehman CEOs to plan a quick golf game and long hunting trips with AIG execs. Priced at who-the-frak-cares, this phone is the piece d’resistance of douchery.

Get the white gold version for him and the yellow gold for her. You’ll thank us.

I’ve never been more in agreement with Wired than I am at this very moment. "Everything here is a crap gadget with diamonds glued on it," says Rob Beschizza in his post called The Worst Diamond-Encrusted Gadgets Of All Time. I’d go a step further and make the claim that diamonds don’t belong anywhere near gadgets. Let the gadget itself do the talking. If it’s cool, all the diamonds in the world won’t give it an ounce of extra oomph.

There are some real gems here, pardon the pun. The Vertu cell phone, a ridiculous looking Game Boy, an MP3 player for dogs (?), a couple of stupid-looking iPod Shuffles, and more. Great read. Click below for the full article.

The Worst Diamond-Encrusted Gadgets Of All Time [Wired]

This is a bit off-topic, but it has quite a bit to do with electronics and boutique home audio so let’s begin. Luxury items have always been status symbols and, increasingly, commodity products. This nasty mix creates a drive to sell more product at luxury prices, which is good for the companies but not so good for the consumer.

Dana Thomas’ book, Deluxe claws at — but can probably never rip off — the facade of luxury houses. While many of us desire Coach bags and, dare I say it, fancy watches, these items more often than not are avatars of shoddy workmanship and the product of market forces that pull on Wal-mart rather than the House of Chanel.

There are a number of famous brands that are purported to hold a rare and privileged pedigree that are now being churned out en masse in China. This is fine — fools and money, etc. — but in order to continue at this pace, companies have to constantly lie to us about the history and rarity of their items, a losing game by any measure.

While there are some luxury items that are hand made and reflect a sort of “old world” aesthetic not found anymore, devices like the Vertu and most high-end, non custom audio gear (Pear Cables, anyone?) is more smoke and mirrors than anything else. I love me some fancy watches, but I know what to stay away from (avoid fashion house watches in general and expensive non-techie quartz watches as a rule) and accept my fate as a luxury dupe. However, I think it gets more nefarious when companies like Prada and conglomerates like LVMH work harder at maintaining an image than at making a quality product.

Book page via Asia Access

Vertu Ascent Ti hitting stores next month [LuxuryLaunches]

Hey! Need a new phone? Don’t want the iPhone but still wanna flaunt your money? Check out the Vertu Constellation, now in a beautiful rose gold color. It’s available in black leather only, because it’s more special than the regular gold-version. Scratch-resistant and chock full o’ laser-engraved keys, this phone will set you back at least $8000, possibly more since it’s a limited-edition coloring.

Vertu Constellation Released In Rose Gold [Sybarites]

Rollin’ in mah Bentley
Cruisin down the street
Got bling on my wrists, ankles
neck and teeth

Got a call on my cellie
Yo let me show you it
This Vertu Ascent T
has gotta be the shit

It’s not out yet
Still with tha FCC
But I got a unit
Cause I got 10,000 Gs

Lots of features
Like a scratch-proof LCD
UMTS Internet
Yeah, I love me some 3G

Back of tha phone
Got a hot leather touch
Brown leather with a logo
Maybe it’s too much?

Top rockin’ all the time
With a Series 40 OS
With a 3-megapixel camera
Your photos be da best

No price has been announced
But you can bet its really high
Now my rap is over
So I’m gonna say goodbye.

Chika, chika via Crave yo!

Then again, some gadgets are ugly. Very, very ugly. We’ve found the ugliest gadgets ever made, so you don’t have to. Some you’ve likely seen before, others you thankfully haven’t. Just believe us: You’ll never take your iPod for granted again.

Vertu Signature Cobra

The fact that the price tag ($310,000… yes that’s a comma and not a period) isn’t the ugliest part of this phone should tell you plenty. Just spend a few seconds admiring the ruby-studded “Mug Me” snake glued to the phone. Thankfully, they only produced 8 of these. Meaning your chances of running into one are about as good as a slurp-ready Zune to play with in the wild.

Oakley O-ROKR/Thump

Oakley and Motorola tag-teamed for this case of misguided digital/optical convergence. Even with all of their practical shortcomings aside (imagine the decision you have to make when driving at night: do I keep my sunglasses on and drive nearly-blind, or risk getting a ticket for holding my phone?), these things are just plain hideous. These look like something a 7-year-old boy would think looks “cool”, and basically scream “I demand attention!”

Nokia N-Gage:

One word: ChocoTaco

Indicatear

You know when you’re running and you’re in The Zone and you absolutely positively can’t take a second to make it clear to anybody around you what direction you’re about to turn lest it ruin your perfect gait? Wouldn’t it be great if your head had built-in turn signals?

Ministry of Gadgets

Bang&Olufsen/Samsung Serene

At first glance, it looks like you’re holding a birth control compact to your head. At second glance, people realize you spent too much on an ugly phone.

XACT XQ2500

This wireless headset (it may look Bluetoothy, but it’s all landline, baby) packs the number pad into the earlobe-sized side. The end result sort of looks like the skeleton part one of those cross-section anatomy books that show what your insides look like. And each bone is numbered.

(via OhGizmo)

BusLink iBot Mp3 Video Player w/ Speaker

It’s easy to forget that steampunk-inspired gadgets usually look neat.

(Amazon page)

Techno Privacy Scarf

You know those old-time cameras that featured massive hoods that completely covered their operator? Well once a product shrinks enough to become mobile, that concept rapidly changes from necessary to stupid to dangerous to absolutely hilarious.

(via TechEBlog)

Ristretto coffee mouse

I don’t know about you, but the last thing I want to fondle all day is a mouse that looks like nutty stools.

Toshiba Bubble Helmet

360-degree immersion in Halo may sound cool, but balancing six pounds of Space Balls-chic hideousness on your head ain’t.

(via TechEBlog)

LED Pong Hat

If you’re going to stick an old-school video game on the front of a hat that looks like it was pulled from the streets of Moscow, the least you can do is make it Tetris.

Flower Power iMac 2001

There’s a reason your MacBook only comes in black and white.

Here’s a riddle for you kiddies. What costs more than a Lamborghini, has a bejeweled snake on it, and is designed for those who need compensation in their nether regions? Give up?

It’s the Vertu Cobra! I totally fooled you. The Cobra costs a whopping $310,000 and comes with tons of diamonds, emeralds and an load of rubies.

Don’t forget though, this is a Vertu. Which means it’s not feature-rich, comes with no kind of cool tech stuff, and you’re screwed if you lose it. You’ll be able to find the Cobra in Us Weekly, InTouch, and other tabloids that feature Paris Hilton.

Vertu Cobra $310,000 Cellphone: Features Justify The Price? [Gizmodo]

Well, the Nokia S40 UI is similar to other Nokia Symbian OS phones, but is “far superior graphics wise”. The phone has a concierge button that calls Vertu’s Concierge service, kinda like OnStar for your phone. It’s also got Bluetooth, GPRS and EDGE, which makes it fairly recent in terms of features, instead of just an old phone packaged in a pretty shell.

As a bonus, it also has WorldMate software to “keep track of flights, different time-zones and currency rates”, useful for any jet-setter that can afford a Vertu.

Vertu Constellation Exclusive Review [Sybarites]