But rarely something as expensive to create as a smart phone.
If anything, mobile phone market is exceedingly horrible because of consolidation into a single product with not much choice.
Even if it was there, that doesn't mean the phone would be small. People who want small phones aren't necessarily wealthy, so they would only be going after the market for the intersection of 'wealthy + want small phone'... which might be a very small market and not worth pursuing.
https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-sch-w2013-jackie-ch...
And in 2018, One Plus had a $3,000 phone:
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/this-3000-oneplus-6-is-the-...
We need a ruling like from back in the Bell System era where you are allowed to bring customer equipment to the network without the network owner permission.
The "RED Hydrogen One," by that fancy camera company is closer I think. At least it had some story that could hypothetically have ended with a compelling technological reason for it to exist (RED is supposed to know cameras). Although, it didn't seem to work out either, but with a sample size of 1 it could be a fluke of poor execution.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/red-quits-the-smartp...
I'm surprised none of the really consumer-oriented camera companies have broken into smartphones. Camera stuff seems like more of a selling point for smartphones, than phone stuff. But, it seems like they never really want to dive in fully.
Many PC companies failed before Apple succeeded. Apple itself failed to the point of almost being acquired by Sun before succeeding by buying NeXT and shipping some hit products in the form of colourful iMacs and iPods with click-wheels.
The biggest problem with luxury products is that they have almost nothing to do with the product's tangible features and everything to do with whether you can establish a valuable brand. We live in a world where people spend thousands of dollars on fancy numbers that we have a kind of gentleman's agreement signify that they "own" a jpeg anyone can copy.
I suggest that there is absolutely a market for ridiculously priced phones, but the problem is not hand-crafting a phone with rare materials, the problem is creating the collective hallucination that owning such a phone will make other people envy you.
Apple actually sold some solid gold watches. There was a market for a $18,000 Apple Watch. It wasn't something worth sustaining in perpetuity, but there was a market. They also launched ridiculously priced accessories from Hermes, and there is still a market for them almost a decade later.
People will pay large amounts of money for exclusive items, but it takes a particular set of skills to launch something and convince the world it's the must-have accessory of the moment.
Without carrier phone whitelist, you won't be able to call on AT&T and many other networks.
I enjoyed MrMobile's review: https://youtu.be/skIgG8q_lKs
Grains of sand getting into the hinge and mandatory factory-installed screen protectors are not things I want to deal with on a purchase that expensive.
The current folding generation launching this year (4th Gen) is likely to be the next big thing, rumors are huge price drop and likely a more polished experience as production is ramping up for more units.
Indeed, all those things are much much easier and cheaper to produce than a smartphone. You could do them at your home.
Try building from scratch a small Android phone at home.