AI phones – As AI-enabled handsets move from novelty to requirement, the economics of the smartphone market are tightening around the biggest ecosystems. Meizu has already signaled it will stop new traditional projects, while forecasts point to GenAI-capable phones taking
He used to collect phones the way some people collect music—brands that never quite matched the mainstream. but somehow made the whole category feel more alive. Meizu was one of them. alongside Fairphone’s repair-first stubbornness. Unihertz’s tiny oddballs. Shiftphone’s modular ideals. Murena’s de-Googled pitch. and Teracube’s attempt to make phone ownership feel less disposable.
Those devices weren’t always flawless, and some never aimed for the middle of the market. But they carried a kind of creative gravity at the edges. Now the industry is sprinting toward AI, and the mood has changed. What once looked like a creative explosion is starting to feel like a gate you have to pay to pass.
Meizu’s warning came in 2024: it said it would end new traditional smartphone projects and focus on AI-enabled devices. The promise sounds futuristic until you read it as a warning label—especially when the economics of AI don’t reward small budgets.
The high end is already where the power lives. Apple, according to the figures cited here, represents about one in five of the roughly 1.3 billion smartphones shipped last year. That puts it near Samsung and Xiaomi on raw volume. But the real control starts higher up the price ladder, where Apple’s reach becomes lopsided.
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. Even without any forecasts, that concentration would leave less room for challengers. The pressure increases because the smartphone market is forecast to fall overall while premium phones are expected to grow.
AI doesn’t just bring new features. It changes the cost of being taken seriously. A smaller phone brand can still source a decent display. tune a respectable camera. include a fast charger. and try to ship something with more personality than yet another glass rectangle with a camera bump. But the next round is different.
AI phones are supposed to require newer chips. more memory. cloud infrastructure. model partnerships. longer software support. and marketing budgets large enough to convince people to use an assistant they ignored last year. Counterpoint expects GenAI-capable phones to reach 45% of global shipments in 2026, up from 36% in 2025. That shift turns AI from a nice-to-have into the next entry fee.
And the squeeze isn’t only on the software side. Reuters reported that IDC expects the smartphone market to see its biggest-ever decline in 2026. One reason mentioned is AI infrastructure demand helping drive up memory costs. In that setup. low-end Android makers are expected to take the hardest hit. while premium brands are better positioned to absorb the shock—or pass it along.
Smaller brands, at their best, were niche for reasons that made sense. Some were flawed in software. Some treated updates like seasonal gossip. Others kept Android from feeling pre-chewed. But even before AI became the “seriousness test. ” the Android world was already watching Oppo. Realme. Vivo. and OnePlus blur into each other.
Meizu isn’t the whole story, but it lands as a painfully tidy example: a company that once helped make Android feel less uniform now has to explain its future through AI roadmaps and ecosystem language, because that’s where the industry says seriousness lives.
The uncomfortable part is that this cycle doesn’t just ask phones to improve. It asks brands to scale up. A phone maker built around repairability. modularity. or de-Googled principles can be compelling—but AI pushes them toward requirements that are harder to meet without the leverage of the biggest ecosystems.
That’s the part many people will feel first: not with a new chip or a smarter assistant. but with what stops showing up on shelves. Because AI is being sold as the thing that will make phones more personal. while the companies most likely to survive are the ones large enough to make every phone feel a little more the same.
The industry may still welcome the “weird” on paper. But in practice, when the market tightens around premium pricing, higher compute, cloud costs, and marketing muscle, those odd little brands run out of room.
AI phones smartphone market GenAI Meizu Apple iPhone Android makers memory costs cloud infrastructure Counterpoint IDC Reuters Fairphone Unihertz Shiftphone Murena Teracube Oppo Realme Vivo OnePlus