Outside of the top 5 handset vendors lies 65-70 manufacturers with a tiny fraction of the marketshare, but which last year added up to 18.3 percent of the global handset market — or almost 216 million handsets — according to Strategy Analytics. Between 2005 and 2007 this segment shrank from 24 percent of the total market to 16.2 percent, but last year the segment rebounded by more than 2 percent. Analyst Bonny Joy put the reasons for the rebound at both the high and low end of the handset business, reports RCR Wireless. The top 5 vendors continued to largely focus on smartphones at a time when these phones were less popular. Two years ago, these feature phones made up 90 percent of the global market, but this year only made up 70 percent. “The inability of traditional vendors to capture the smartphone segment” is the reason, Joy said, “why they lost momentum.” Smartphone marketshare is fought for intensely by well-known companies such as *Apple*, *RIM*, and *Palm* which are well-known brands — despite being just outside of the top 5 and having a low marketshare in the global handset business.
The other reason for the increased marketshare is carriers looking for ultra low-cost handsets from, say, ZTE or Huawei. These handsets are usually carrier-branded but they often have the manufacturer’s brand somewhere as well. “These trends may upset the consistency of the
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