Italian Brands in the Archive

The archive contains 5,336 phone pages, and most of them carry the names everyone knows: Samsung, Nokia, LG, Motorola. Filtering for Italian brands, though, leaves just eleven, for a total of 171 pages. One fact needs to be stated right away, because it changes how you read the rest: only 99 of these are actual mobile phones. The others are USB internet dongles, home cordless phones, and satellite navigators — the archive filed them alongside the phones, but phones they are not.

Ninety-nine models out of five thousand is less than 2%. And yet they gathered 12,495 votes and 1,832 comments from readers: numbers you'd expect from brands with a real following, not mere curiosities.

Telit, the one true phone maker

With 41 models, all of them phones, Telit is the only Italian brand in the archive with a catalog that qualifies, in every sense, as that of a manufacturer. Born in Trieste from the ashes of Telital, it appears in the archive from 1999 to 2010, peaking in 2005 with fifteen models in a single year.

It's also the most discussed Italian brand: 4,606 votes and 750 comments. The symbol model is the Telit GU1100 from 2005, with 753 votes and 215 comments — more than many phones from brands ten times its size. Before it, the Telit G83 from 2003 had already racked up 227 votes. After 2006 its presence thins out: two models in 2009, one in 2010, then silence. Telit didn't go under — it left the consumer market for industrial communication modules, the kind that today sit inside machines rather than in pockets.

Onda, the dongle brand

Onda is the Italian brand with the most pages overall, 58, but the breakdown tells a different story: 37 are USB internet dongles and only 21 are phones. It's the exact snapshot of a company that found its market in the era's mass-market accessory — mobile connectivity for the laptop — more than in the phone itself.

Its phones, though, left a mark: the Onda N5000 from 2005 has 900 votes and 188 comments, and the Onda N5020 another 813 votes. These are the highest numbers reached by an Italian phone in this archive, GU1100 aside.

NGM, the Italian brand that bet everything on dual SIM

NGM has only 11 models in the archive, between 2008 and 2009, but one fact describes them better than any introduction: ten of the eleven are Dual SIM. At a time when dual SIM was still extremely rare on phones from the big manufacturers — in 2008 it applied to just 1.4% of models released — a Florentine brand had made it its entire reason for being. The most voted is the NGM Black Angel, with 503 votes.

If this topic interests you, the full story of dual SIM is told in Dual SIM: the Archive's Last Big Innovation.

Carrier-branded phones, and the one-hit wonders

The 34 Telecom pages aren't Italian-made products: they're devices made by others and sold under the carrier's brand. And two-thirds of them aren't even phones — 22 are home cordless phones, the Aladino family. Among the actual phones, the most commented is the Telecom Big New from 2010, with 27 comments. The same goes for the 4 TIM pages from 2008.

Then there are the one-hit wonders, and they're the most fascinating part of the list:

• Drin.it — six models, the GSG series, all six from 2002: an entire catalog born and finished in a single year. The GSG 3000 still managed to gather 57 votes and 15 comments.
• Enteos — four models in the I-GO series between 2002 and 2003; the I-GO 610 is the most voted with 156 votes.
• Polsofonino — three models from 2008, phones meant to be worn on the wrist, an idea the market rejected, only to try again ten years later with smartwatches.
• Bento — a single model, the MK 100 from 2007, with 124 votes.
• Nortek — seven pages, all Roadmaster satellite navigators, no phones.
• Olivetti — the most illustrious name on the list appears with just two pages, from 2010, and they're both internet dongles: the Olicard 145 and the Olicard 100.

Who's missing. Brondi, the Italian brand many would expect to find here, has no pages at all in this archive: it wasn't removed, the editorial team of the time simply never cataloged it. We'd rather say so than pretend to have a complete catalog.

Want to see the other brands that left the scene in those years, Italian and otherwise? We cover that in Brands That No Longer Exist.