Fairphone Has a New Plan to Get You to Care Leave a comment
“I can not see any important progress over the following few years,” says Stryjak. “Different firms have caught up somewhat bit by way of making issues extra sturdy and sustainable and repairable, and with shoppers a key driver continues to be pricing and model. Fairphone can have its loyal fan base, however I can not see that considerably increasing anytime quickly.”
“No person Desires to Pull on a Lifeless Horse”
We put to Fairphone the concept it might must make do pootling together with this similar area of interest viewers. “I’ll say it’s nonsense, proper?” Fairphone CEO Raymond van Eck instructed WIRED.
“I’d by no means have began at an organization … if we really feel there isn’t a potential. No person desires to, as we are saying in Dutch, pull on a useless horse to see if it may stroll.” Fairphone relies in Amsterdam, and van Eck was appointed CEO in August 2024.
“Within the subsequent 5 years, we actually have the intention to quadruple our addressable market and to take our fair proportion of that,” says van Eck. The corporate has additionally set a purpose of “double digit progress” only for this yr. The plain query: how?
A part of Fairphone’s technique is in fact seen within the Fairphone 6 itself. It has some neat concepts resembling a slider that places the telephone into an Necessities mode. This pares again the interface that can assist you get away from the distractions of, for instance, social media.
There’s a breezy way of life angle right here Fairphones have arguably not had earlier than. And fostering that was part of the rebrand the corporate kicked off originally of 2025, which included binning the stiff-looking, all-caps firm emblem of outdated for one thing a bit extra pleasant.
The Fairphone Repair
Van Eck says it’s about “altering the order” of priorities, of placing the gadget itself at pole place fairly than the ethics it represents. “Ultimately, it is also clarifying Fairphone’s imaginative and prescient, as a result of the rebrand gave us a extra pleasant, extra approachable identification,” he says. “It’s a bit much less paternalistic.”
The message is that Fairphone isn’t only a telephone for eco warriors. And chief know-how officer Chandler Elizabeth Hatton means that picture, that traditional Fairphone message, might have truly proved off-putting for some.
“Once we are advertising and marketing the gadget, we do not lead with that. Not in our promoting campaigns, not in our communication, and in addition not the way in which that I wish to convey it to you,” says Hatton. “It may possibly turn out to be preachy in some markets. That message is resonating much less proper now. There are folks which might be in panic but in addition fully exhausted by the local weather disaster or questions of ethics.”
So … is it time to de-woke Fairphone? That appears too blunt an interpretation, as a result of there’s no indication that Fairphone plans to dilute its requirements. It’s simply not going to harp on about them fairly as overtly.
Turning Down the Quantity
“Fairphone was based 12 years in the past, mainly to sort out the social and environmental points embedded within the electronics business,” says Van Eck. “What we additionally noticed is that Fairphone was fairly located round telling that story … which meant that the Fairphone was for a lesser addressable market.”
This new strategy additionally entails not having too daring a tackle issues like AI, which owing to its environmental impression may very well be seen as antithetical to 1 a part of the outdated Fairphone message.
