Brands That No Longer Exist

Browsing through the 107 brands in our archive, you come across names that were once as familiar as Samsung or Apple are today, and that are now just a memory. Here are some of the most significant stories, told through the real models that remain in the archive.

Siemens (143 models) sold its mobile phone division to BenQ in 2005, briefly becoming BenQ-Siemens (26 models) before disappearing from the phone market for good a few years later.

Sagem (157 models) was for years one of the most prolific manufacturers in Europe — it's the fourth brand by number of models in our archive — before gradually exiting the mobile phone market.

Ericsson (36 models as a standalone brand) merged into the Sony Ericsson (273 models) joint venture in 2001; Sony took over the rest in 2012, closing the Ericsson chapter in mobile phones.

Palm (34 models, plus the 9 under the Palmone brand used during a transition period), a pioneer of digital assistants even before smartphones, was acquired by HP in 2010 — which shut down the platform a few years later.

Qtek (23 models) was the brand under which HTC sold its smartphones in Europe, before unifying everything under the HTC name in the mid-2000s.

Sendo (20 models), a British manufacturer now nearly forgotten, ceased operations in 2005.

In total, these brands alone cover over 500 models in our archive — a significant piece of mobile phone history that, without an archive like this one, would risk disappearing entirely from collective memory.

Want to know which brands dominate the archive today instead? We talk about it in Samsung, LG, Nokia: Three Brands, One Third of the Archive.