You may have heard of China-based TCL. It produces and sells smartphones under the Alcatel and Turing brands. It’s also the exclusive contract manufacturer for BlackBerry-branded devices. The company also produces TVs for Samsung, owns the Palm brand, and co-brands TVs with Roku. It has now entered into a new partnership with luxury mobile phone brand Vertu to supply it with smartphone technology.
All Vertu smartphones are hand-built in the United Kingdom and are adorned with expensive materials and fine jewels. They do cost a pretty penny so they’re not for everyone.
Now that this $40 million deal has been completed, it appears that underneath all of the leather and the jewels, what customers will simply be getting will be a smartphone from a Chinese manufacturer. According to the press release, this deal will put TCL’s “innovative technology” in Vertu’s next batch of 30,000 luxury smartphones.
The press release doesn’t really go into a lot of detail about the partnership between the two companies but on the face of it, it appears to be a supplier deal for TCL.
Be that as it may, supplying technology for a brand that has long been associated with luxury is great for TCL’s own brand. TCL has been working hard to establish itself in the market and its strategy of leveraging other brands appear to be working for it very well.
Filed in . Read more about Tcl and Vertu. Source: prnewswire