I have a soft spot for phone brands that made Android feel less inevitable. Meizu is one example, but there have been plenty of smaller names with their own odd gravity — from Fairphone’s repair-first stubbornness to Unihertz’s tiny oddballs, Shiftphone’s modular ideals, Murena’s de-Googled pitch, and Teracube’s attempt to make phone ownership feel less disposable. They weren’t always perfect, and some were never built to go mainstream, but they made smartphones feel alive around the edges.
Now the AI phone push is arriving, and it already looks less like a creative explosion than a toll gate.
Meizu announced in 2024 that it would stop traditional smartphone projects and focus on AI-enabled devices — which sounds futuristic until it starts feeling like a warning sign.
The Rich End Will Define the Future
Apple doesn’t need to own the entire phone market to bend it toward Cupertino. The Wall Street Journal notes that Apple represents about one in five of the roughly 1.3 billion smartphones shipped last year, putting it close to Samsung and Xiaomi on raw volume. The real control starts higher up the price ladder. In phones priced at $600 or more, Apple controls more than two-thirds of the segment. At $1,000 or more, it takes more than three-quarters.
That dominance matters because AI features require powerful processors, ample RAM, and capable neural engines — components that don’t come cheap. As AI becomes central to the phone experience, the cost of entry rises. Brands that compete on price alone will struggle to deliver the kind of on-device AI that premium phones can offer.
What Happens to the Niche Players?
The brands that made Android interesting — the weird, the quirky, the ideologically driven — face an uncomfortable question. Can they afford the AI race? Building custom AI chips, training large language models, and integrating cloud AI services all require resources that small teams don’t have.
Some will partner with larger AI providers. Others will focus on specific niches where general-purpose AI isn’t the priority. But the days of a small team building a competitive smartphone with off-the-shelf components and a unique software vision are numbered. The AI phone era raises the barrier to entry, and when that happens, the middle gets squeezed.
Survival Strategies
The brands that survive will be the ones that find a clear answer to one question: what can you do with AI that the giants can’t or won’t? Privacy-focused AI, specialized hardware for specific professions, or deep integration with particular ecosystems could all be viable paths.
But the window is closing. The AI phone era isn’t coming — it’s already here. And for the weird, wonderful brands that made smartphones interesting, the clock is ticking.
