Celsius focuses on a few core functions telephony photo and email

There are more and more numerous, watch brands launch applications iPhone with their latest models of watches. And then there is Celsius X, presented this week at the Basel fair: a mobile phone which is also a precious timepiece. Heavy in the hand, the object, although discreet, goes not unnoticed: dressed in glass Sapphire, mainly titanium and ebony, it displays the inner workings of a vortex in his valve.

The Grand luxury since this model will be sold only in 50 copies for the sum of 250,000 euros, the price of a home! A shine for this test run coup designed to fuel the buzz around the young start-up who developed, before the launch, end of the year, another cheaper model, code name: "B ". Marketed as the Celsius X, few watchmakers prestige retailers type Dubail or Arije in Paris, the latter is still announced around 50,000 euros!

Like virtue, pioneer luxury phone, Celsius aims a clientele of men who have several mobile terminals and the phone is, such as watches or automobile, an element of social status", says Edouard Meylan, the source of this project a little crazy along with three friends, engineers and business school graduates.

The young man (Polytechnique Lausanne, MBA Wharton) was of which hold: his family is a shareholder of the Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet. To be part of the Seraglio has not prevented them to face many obstacles in the four years required for the development of their concept. Richard Mille, it was believed. Indeed, the man who revolutionized watchmaking of luxury of the past ten years joined Celsius capital in 2008, helping to make the project. Also others, such as Sagem Wireless or the brotherhood porthole, subsidiary of LVMH (owner of the group Les Echos) specializing in the development of movements to complications, that the start-up is among its suppliers.

Antithesis of the iPhone

Celsius X in fact proposes to marry the best of two worlds, telephony and mechanical watch, "with as little as possible of Electronics", provides Edouard Meylan, who sees the exact antithesis of the iPhone in its phones. "Celsius focuses on a few core functions: telephony, photo and email." "We have not assumed GPS and Internet access is not a priority," said Recalling that the target clientele already has everything what needs in this area. Not downloadable applications, but a phone made autonomous by the recovery of the kinetic energy associated with its use, and a little like an automatic watch dates back only through the movements of the wearer. This is in any case the objective

Some components have been "micromécanisés" as the phone connector of load, the SIM card valve opened with a small button or the battery which ejects all alone. Retro Edouard Meylan refutes the term: "whenever we can, we sachet components like the luxury watchmaking." Ditto for accessories, them also redesigned: the hands-free kit is similar to a tie clip and the Holster for the protection of the phone is under way holster jacket to not distort his pockets.

Market niche is, telephony of luxury (from 1,500 euros price) is difficult to identify. The leaders of Celsius assess it between 2 and 3 billion euros this year. In the wake of virtue and Modelabs who works in mark white on behalf of houses of fashion (Dior, Versace) or watch (Tag Heuer), others have embarked, such Ulysse Nardin and "followers" such as Gresso and Mobiado, which ride on the request from for most of the Middle East and Russia. The Celsius range, is in fact a trilogy with the release already scheduled two other mobile, the "VI" in 2013 with the "II" by 2015, one and the other complications. It has no more.