Luxury phone-maker Vertu collapses

I worked there as a contract tech-writer a few years back. The people were great company and very talented. But the bling and the actual value proposition - who knows? I guess the market has decided.

Interesting factoids:

1. They have/had airport-style security scanners that shake you down on your way out. The idea is to prevent theft of their expensive phones and their expensive components and decorations (think diamonds). To get out, you press a button, and if the machine beeps, you get searched and your stuff gets scanned. Not sure how effective it was - if you had access to the valuable stuff (I didn't) I can imagine that swallowing a few bits and pieces might defeat the security measures.

2. When I started, they were owned by Nokia who had just been bought by Microsoft. So I spent months developing a user manual based on Windows Phone. On my last day, having handed everything over, they shyly told me that they'd also been developing an Android model in secret, just in case the market turned against them. Sure enough - they were snapped up by a private equity firm and their next model was an Android.