BARCELONA, Spain — Big phones, small phones, cheap phones, expensive phones, curved phones — and all of them hoping to take a chunk out of the iPhone.

Many of the world’s top smartphone makers used the huge industry trade show held here this week, Mobile World Congress, to entice buyers around the globe.

But despite the conspicuous absence of Apple, its iPhone was the clear target of those announcements. And the iPhone seems unstoppable. A little over a month ago, in what is becoming a familiar pattern, Apple reported record iPhone sales, including an 83 percent increase in sales in China versus the same period last year. According to a report from Canaccord Genuity, an investment firm, Apple might earn as much as 93 percent of the profit in the entire handset industry.

So, what does that leave for everyone else? A dogfight over scraps.

“They’re the kings of the hill,” said Ben Wood, mobile and wireless analyst at the research firm CCS Insight, referring to Apple. “They are sustaining gravity-defying margins at a time when most other manufacturers are struggling just to break even. There’s so little margin left for everybody else that it’s just intensifying the competition.”