ZTE Corp. plans to launch a new smartphone based on Google Inc.’s mobile operating system sometime early in 2010. But as this segment of the mobile phone industry keeps growing and growing, who will fix these contraptions when they break?

Hong Kong’s ZTE is getting into the act. Everybody’s making smartphones these days. The new ZTE phone, as of yet remaining nameless, might as well be called the Bingo. ZTE is hoping that whatever the thing is called, it might add an incredible 50 million handsets to its overall shipping inventory of 60 million handsets and mobile broadband data cards if its newest Google-based unit saturates the mobile phone segment with worldwide distribution. Distributors are already lining up, with the Bingo’s potential suitors including such industry heavyweights as Vodaphone Group PLC, Verizon Wireless, France Telecom SA’s Orange, and T-Mobile vowing to supply ZTE’s smartphones to every corner of the known Earth, including wherever possible in the midst of the great oceans. Smartphones are flexible, ZTE’s spokespersons say, allowing consumers to send e-mails and conduct a myriad of multimedia applications -- once the exclusive domain of personal computers. ZTE used to be content to be a vendor of low-cost telecom equipment, and that stuff seldom made it out of Asia, but in those not-so-long ago days, smartphones weren’t so smart – or so commonplace. One can’t really blame ZTE. The company just wants to pad its gross margin with a slice of the pie.

But it’s becoming like that ancient Star Trek episode featuring a guy named Mudd. If the show was still going, this one might be called "The Trouble with Smartphones." Although they don’t multiply in the same manner as rabbits, hamsters, or tribbles, they might as well.

Still, consumers are coming to depend upon these contraptions a little more each year. There’s a contest for units capable of accessing the most applications, often referred to these days as "apps," and they are already beginning to break in a multitude of ways as consumers are becoming increasingly careless … and some of the latest smartphone warranties aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. What’s a consumer to do?

The answer is right there, as plain to see as … the simplest app. Independent repair shops for smartphones and their cousins are popping up like oases in the tech-laden deserts. They’ll fix ‘em for you.