Things are looking glum for gadget fans, with one high-profile name announcing it’s getting out of the smartphone business and another rumoured to be heading for the door. But what’s the reason for pulling the ripcord, and will there be further exits to come in 2026 and beyond?
In mid-January, Asus announced there were no plans for new Zenfone or ROG Phone handsets going forward. Then not even a week later, OnePlus was forced to deny it was being wound up by parent company Oppo, reportedly due to dwindling market shares in India and Asia – territories that account for 74% of the firm’s global shipments according to an Android Headlines investigation.
OnePlus may keep on truckin’ for a while yet – Oppo does have very deep pockets – or the apparent cancellation of the OnePlus Open 2 could be the canary in the coal mine.
Whether this turns out to be true or not, it’s a simple fact that the phone world is dominated by a few key players. In the West, that’s Apple, with Samsung in second place and Google usually a distant third. In China, domestic names like Vivo, Huawei and Xiaomi are more popular. Everyone else is basically fighting for scraps, at which point making a profit becomes incredibly difficult.
Asus has decided to put its resources elsewhere – namely the artificial intelligence gold rush – rather than continue with niche compact flagships and gaming phones that weren’t popular enough to justify the eye-watering costs of development, production, marketing, shipping and post-sale support.
Which brands could be next to go?
Focus solely on Western markets and you might assume names like Huawei don’t have long to live: US trade embargoes and a lack of Google services has all but killed its presence in Europe and America. But that doesn’t take into account its colossal Asian customer base – it is second only to Vivo, with a 16% market share in Q3 2025. Xiaomi, Oppo and Honor all outsell Apple domestically too.
HMD has largely given up on high-end hardware at this point and its market share doesn’t look promising even after a pivot to budget and repairable handsets. However, it’s comfortably the world leader for feature phones, so is unlikely to disappear any time soon.
The wildly fluctuating prices of RAM and storage chips caused by the AI boom stands to have the biggest impact on smaller brands, which could put Nothing in the danger zone. The British firm run by former OnePlus co-lead Carl Pei has already spun off its value-minded CMF sub-brand into its own separate entity, and the flagship Nothing Phone 3‘s distinctive design proved controversial with fans. It has strong investment backing, though, which should help it weather the current hardware price hikes (which should hopefully stabilise by mid-2027).
Though it hasn’t said anything official, the smart money would be on Sony having effectively exited smartphones already. It hasn’t released a new handset since 2025’s Xperia 1 VII flagship, with no replacements for the mid-range Xperia 10 or affordable Xperia 5 in sight. The firm has kept die-hards happy by refusing to let the 3.5mm headphone port or microSD card slot die, but has fallen behind on design, battery life and photographic ability. High prices and limited regional availability haven’t helped either.
Phone brands we’ve loved and lost
Some smartphone brands came and went without ever making much of an impact on the wider tech world, but others left a lasting impression.
Blackberry officially gave up on new phone hardware in 2018 after it launched the Android-powered Key2 to a very muted reception. Capacitive touchscreens had eroded the need for physical keys and the iPhone’s exploding popularity with business customers took a huge bite out of the firm’s market share that it never truly recovered from – a shock, given it had been comfortably leading the emerging smartphone market a decade prior. The Clicks Communicator is shaping up to be a spiritual successor.
HTC almost single-handedly saw Android through its formative years with a polished interface (who can forget the flip clock homescreen widget) and powerful enough hardware to run Google’s OS smoothly. Premium materials and sculpted designs then elevated handsets like the HTC One M8 to iconic status. Once heavy hitters like Samsung and Huawei caught up, however, it struggled to stand out – eventually throwing in the towel and pivoting to virtual reality. The phone division lives on in spirit, though, having been bought by Google and folded into its Pixel smartphone team.
Microsoft had multiple phone world exits at this point. First was when it shuttered the Windows 10 Mobile OS, leaving Android and iOS as the last two mobile operating systems standing. Next was when it sold its Microsoft Mobile division (which had previously been Finnish mobile monolith Nokia) to HMD Global. Finally it decided against a follow-up to the Surface Duo 2 – which had done the Android foldable thing before flexible displays had become the norm. Competition was good for the industry, and plenty of people had a soft spot for Windows Mobile’s tile-based homescreen.
LG‘s phone world departure was a big one. After hitting its stride with the G2, which gave contemporary HTC and Samsung handsets a real shock on its arrival, the firm become something of an innovation specialist. Its flagship phones rocked audiophile-grade DACs, sported modular accessories long before bolt-on camera lenses and magnetic battery packs were a thing, and did things with displays no-one else was attempting, like the rotating screen LG Wing and clip-on second screen for the V60 Thinq, essentially doing a book-style foldable without a pricey flexible panel.
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