Since the Chinese brands (Huawei, ZTE) seems to be out for a carrier deal in the US market. It would be a option for some other players to step in. Som non Chinese brands.
1: Sony going in the right direction. Sony Xperia XA2 and the other models showed in CES have a working fingerprintsensor in USA now. Slightly new design with smaller bezels to. According to most rumours they will show of new models in MWC 2018 also. A XZ Pro with Snapdragon 845. Probably with “bezel less” design and a dual camera setup.
2: HMD Global (Nokia) from Finland have a stock android approach, and they will show up some new models to. Probably several models in the MWC Spain event. I guess including a Nokia 9 with Zeiss cameras that are more advanced than on those in Nokia 8.
3: Micromax from India or some other brand from there. Would be a opportunity for them to step in to the US market to.
4. Motorola could try harder to get a footprint in USA to, but they are of course owned by Lenovo from China.
I think Samsung and Apple still will be the biggest brands in the US phone market in any event. But consumer would have some another option to buy. Any thoughts?
Bats
<blockquote><a href="#239304"><em>In reply to hrlngrv:</em></a></blockquote><p>Samsung? Samsung practically makes everything. The iPhone even has Samsung DNA. Also Samsung TVs are the best in the business. That's not surprising being that they make the best screens, that other manufactureres want. </p>
skane2600
<p>Last time I checked it was rather easy to buy a phone that wasn't made by Samsung or Apple. We've never bought a phone made by either of them.</p><p><br></p>
sprewell
<p>It's basically impossible at this point. The mobile market has settled, Google/Samsung and Apple are the Microsoft/Intel and Apple this time around. All you can hope for is the next platform, whether smart speakers or wearables or whatever, to have more creators.</p><p><br></p><p>I say this as someone who greatly values choice, has never bought an Apple iOS device, and only a couple Samsung devices. My next phone is an LG. But Apple and Samsung are so entrenched, have such a huge hardware and software lead, and spend so many billions on engineering, fabs, marketing, etc. that nobody can catch them now.</p><p><br></p><p>The contenders behind them, HTC, LG, Moto, Nokia, Blackberry, Sony, have been falling back rather than gaining share, losing out to cheap, cutthroat Chinese brands like Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Huawei, ZTE, who could never challenge Samsung or Apple. Only Huawei is trying now and has some semblance of a shot, but if they get shut out of western markets, there goes that.</p><p><br></p><p>It would take both a particularly inspired new entrant and catastrophic fuckups by SamApple. I don't see that happening.</p>
sprewell
<blockquote><a href="#239437"><em>In reply to johnh3:</em></a></blockquote><p>To me and most people, the carrier is a dumb data pipe. They try to differentiate themselves with that stuff, but those are niche features that almost nobody knows or cares about.</p>