1) It costs a lot of money to develop smartphones. To justify a higher price, you'd need to spend a lot of money on people to develop a better phone. It's almos

1) It costs a lot of money to develop smartphones. To justify a higher price, you'd need to spend a lot of money on people to develop a better phone. It's almost certain that you won't be able to compete with Google or Apple on research budget since there are a limited number of people willing to spend $10,000+ on a phone, so your market is gonna be small. 2) People don't want to switch ecosystems. Say you develop a new platform to compete with Android and ios and you come up with something better (that's a big if). Assuming only your $10k+ phones have that new OS, developers won't want to make apps for your phone. So you'll end up needing to be compatible with Android in order to get access to all of their apps. Most likely, you'll end up just using Android like some Vertu phones do. And then people will wonder why they are spending so much money on a phone that is basically just an Android phone and does the same thing as any other Android phone. Maybe you'll have slightly higher specs, but the flagship phones from the current big companies already have specs that are high enough for most users. 3) Cellphones become outdated quickly. If I spend $10K on a phone, I'm still not going to want to use it in 10 years from now. A lot of luxury items are made to last for a long time. I have sunglasses (not particularly luxurious ones) that are 12 years old. I'll concede that many luxury items are not made to last long, but for many of them, there is at least a perception of quality. 4) Cellphones stay in your pocket and aren't as visible as many luxury items such as bags or clothing.