As Apple and Samsung continue to divvy up all of the profits in the smartphone industry, rival vendors have yet to really find a way to loosen their stranglehold on the market. Innovation and execution used to be vendors’ top priority during the early growth period that began in 2007 with the launch of Apple’s iPhone, and vendors like HTC were hugely successful thanks to sleek hardware and smart software. But then it all came crashing down. According to leading market research firm GfK, the only way for vendors to compete with the global duopoly Samsung and Apple have established is to completely upend their strategies and, in a sense, stop selling smartphones. To be successful in the modern smartphone

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