GoKawiilJoe Maring / Android Authority
To say that the world’s a little messed up in 2026 may be the understatement of the century. Global economies are chaotic at best, and the rise of authoritarianism threatens democracies around the world. Maybe some of you could at least stomach this mess if we were getting anything out of it, but the entire tech industry feels particularly impacted, between tariff-driven uncertainty and AI investment sending memory and storage prices into the stratosphere. And with all this happening, it feels like a miracle that any smartphone manufacturers are still hanging on.
Right out of the gate, we got the year started with ASUS bowing out of the smartphone business, and now rumors of the impending demise of OnePlus have us looking around the room and taking stock: Who’s still going to be left standing by 2027?
Which smartphone brand is going under next? 79 votes OnePlus 52 % Motorola 14 % TCL 23 % Pixel 😮 11 %
Tech manufacturing has never been in a place this precarious before
David Imel / Android Authority
Sci-fi enthusiasts had been dreaming of pocket-sized computers for decades, but back in the mid-2000s, we finally crossed a threshold where manufacturing techniques became sufficiently mature, and components both powerful and affordable enough, to start making that vision a reality. And quickly, smartphones evolved past their PDA roots to become the world-changing tech we know and love today.
For a while, they also just kept getting better, and every year we got more and more for our money. That helped fuel lots of healthy competition, and we saw plenty of brands trying to find their niche. But as the years dragged on, some big names started throwing in the towel. HTC was an early casualty. By the time LG bowed out — once a name we discussed in the same breath as Samsung — it was starting to feel like nobody was safe. Motorola and Nokia are still technically around, but Nokia really only in name only, and Motorola is hardly the force for competition it once was.
Unless you are outright winning in this market, it's hard to justify playing at all.
The worst part: This was all before we even got to our current threat. The novelty of smartphones in general had started to dry up, with shoppers really settling into their preferences. As a result, buying patterns crystalized around a few brands — a process only sped along by the carriers. That left us coming into the 2020s with fewer choices than ever before — but at least we were getting our best options yet.
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