The mobile phone has come full circle. It launched as an expensive, not to mention bulky gadget for the well- heeled executive and became for many a mass- market, almost disposable, everyday essential. Now, though, the communications industry is seeing the phone return to its elite origins.

Take, as an extreme example, the Gresso Luxor Las Vegas – encrusted with 45.5 carats of black diamonds, made of gold and 200-year-old African blackwood and yours for $1m (€690,000). That is the equivalent of almost 10 years of peak-time talk time.

Or consider other ‘jewellery’ phones, costing from €2,000 to €500,000, by specialist brands such as market pioneer Vertu, new companies Goldvish or Stuart Hughes or – suggesting that the top-end watch industry increasingly sees a new generation of hand-built phones as a market with similar potential – those from Tag Heuer or Ulysse-Nardin.

But this new market is not all cartoon excess. Indeed, according to entrepreneur Thomas Jensen, CEO of Aesir (another new launch brand, with a phone designed by industrial-design hotshot Yves Behar) the super-cell sector is, like that for mechanical watches, indicative more of a demand for the crafted and considered.

“Even with the recession, there is a strong market for products that require a certain knowledge to appreciate – it’s not always about flashiness so much as a demand for the well-designed but also highly crafted product,” he says of his €7,000 phone. “Of course, an unfortunate by-product of taking that approach – without the mass production and huge sales of typical phones, but with all the same tooling and start-up costs – is the price. But phones have become a means of saying something about yourself, and so more people want a more individual product.”

Aesir’s first phone, for example, is built using parts from a number of specialist European manufacturers, in sapphire crystal, ceramic moulding and precision machine tooling among others, brought together for a stripped-back, characteristically Danish aesthetic. It’s been 30 months in development, compared with an industry average of nine months. Celsius, another brand, has its X VI II, with an in-built tourbillon timepiece, making it a kind of 21st-century pocket watch. As Peter Cunningham, principal analyst with cellphone industry researchers Canalys, observes: “This is not a huge market; arguably it is not even a phone market. For all intents and purposes, these phones are not phones – they’re expressions of perfection.”

In terms of functionality, super-cells are like handsome simpletons, whereas smartphones are more like nerdy geniuses. Since the money is in data-roaming rather than calls, it is the latter that the industry is especially keen to push.

“We’re not competing with iPhones or Blackberries – we simply can’t on the technological front, nor with the giant infrastructure of the companies that trade in technology,” concedes Edouard Meylan, co-founder of Celsius, which is working on developing an increasingly mechanical mobile phone. “These products are pieces of art that can also be used to make calls. For more everyday use, buyers are likely to have at least one smartphone. Of course, some will buy for the bling factor. But others will buy for the same reason collectors of fine watches do.”

Jensen goes further, suggesting that the super-cells represent a reaction against the invasiveness of smartphones (not everyone wants a 24/7 working life) and a demand for uncomplicated products that do one thing well rather than many poorly. “Complexity can just make products less efficient and harder to use,” he suggests. “It may not be a feasible business model for the mobile phone industry’s biggest players, but less is better – that is what luxury is really about.”

Ironically, given the luxury phone market’s seeming ostentation, the new super-cells arguably represent more progressive values. In being built to last, they reflect a more back-to-basics or eco thinking that most technology manufacturers ignore in their readiness to persuade consumers to upgrade as often as possible. Jensen describes such semi- disposability as “pre-recessionary thinking that makes no sense now”.

For some, super-cells are pleasing but unnecessary products that make no sense. “There is simply no need for a phone like these in anyone’s life,” says Pierre Osstang, president of Vertu. “But then there is no need for an Hermès bag or a Rolls-Royce.

“It took decades for watches or cars to move beyond their original functional intention. Twenty years ago hardly anyone had a cellphone. The market is progressing that much faster because the cellphone is arguably the definitive accessory of our times.”