It’s become increasingly clear over the past two years that Samsung and Apple are dominating the smartphone industry. While Samsung has flooded worldwide markets with a variety of Android handsets at all prices and sizes, Apple remains the guiding player in the high-end smartphone category.
Far behind the market share of those two companies comes a group of smartphone manufacturers that, at this point, could almost be described as also rans. LG, Motorola, HTC, and Sony have all released impressive hardware that hasn’t made a dent in the high-end dominance of Apple and Samsung. With Chinese companies now sucking up market share at the low end of the market these companies are now shifting strategy to focus on the section of the market that remains.
A DigiTimes report this week reveals that HTC, Sony, and LG have all shifted their smartphone divisions to focus more on the mid-range segment. According to the report’s “industry sources” this portion of the market encompasses smartphones priced from $300 to $400.
Of course, these companies are still producing handsets for the high end of the smartphone market (some of the best in a few cases) for established markets such as the U.S. and Europe. The mid-range lines detailed in the report are primarily being marketed to emerging markets such as China. According to DigiTimes the HTC Desire 816 will be coming to China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom in the near future.
Image via HTC
