Christian Dior

Christian Dior Enters the Mobile Device Market

The luxury fashion brand Christian Dior has announced its entry into the mobile device market. The high-end mobile phone will be built by ModeLabs Group of France and is expected to sell for approximately €3,500. The move to extend into mobile is not new for fashion brands. Armani, Prada and Dolce & Gabbana all have relationships with vendors to sell branded devices. These extensions by well-known brands into the mobile market will continue to be a key trend for the next 18 months, which Gartner highlights in "Market Trends: Reshaping Mobile Device Markets, Worldwide, 2008-2009."

The price point for Christian Dior's mobile device puts it more in line with Nokia's ultrahigh-tier Vertu range of devices, where the price is in thousands of euros - rather than the other fashion-led products, whose prices are in the hundreds of euros. Even with this price point, Christian Dior claimed, in an interview with WSJ, to be looking to sell 10,000 devices a year initially, growing to €200 million of revenue longer term (or approximately 57,140 devices). To achieve this volume, Christian Dior anticipates positioning its device for the emerging markets of Russia and China, rather than purely for mature Western markets.

With more entrants into the mobile device market, consumer choice, even at this ultrahigh end, is set to grow, and competition for established players is set to increase further.