In addition to the global players, are there Apple, Samsung, Huawei, etc. In China? They also produce smaller, flexible smartphone manufacturers?

Or has the enormous effort in terms of software and hardware made it impossible for the smaller manufacturers to keep up with the technology

Gigaset manufactures smartphones in Germany.

Xiaomi should be mentioned. Cheap smartphones with good quality. And they are slowly growing into a "global player".

The Fairphone still exists.

But bbk is actually a mega player in china

There are probably hundreds.

Bringing a smartphone to the market is not such an enormous effort, especially in China. Technologically keeping up is of course another topic…

95% of all cell phones are made in China.