Fairphone

Fairphone is a Dutch electronics manufacturer that designs and produces smartphones and headphones. It aims to minimise the ethical and environmental impact of its devices by using recycled, fairtrade and conflict-free materials, maintaining fair labour conditions throughout its workforce and suppliers, and enabling users to easily repair their devices through modular design and by providing replacement parts.[2] As of June 2025, the company's most recent smartphone is the Fairphone 6, a highly modular and easily repairable device for which it plans to provide seven years of Android OS updates and eight years of security patches, as well as a five-year warranty.[3][4]

Fairphone has been dubbed "the most ethical smartphone in the world", scoring 98 out of 100 possible points by the British magazine Ethical Consumer.[5]

Social impact and competitors

The phone is modular, which makes it easily repairable and customisable by the user, in keeping with right to repair principles. According to the company, increasing the lifespan of a phone by two years reduces CO2 emissions by 30%.[9]

The gold and silver in Fairphone 4 has the Fairtrade label, also metals used are said to come from conflict-free mines.[17] The company promises a 5-year warranty period and long-term support for software updating and spare parts.[18] In 2017, Fairphone's co-founder Bas van Abel acknowledged that it was currently impossible to produce a 100% fair phone, suggesting it was more accurate to call his company's phones "fairer".[19][20]

In an interview with Will Georgi, Fairphone co-founder Tessa Wernink mentions:"There might be a misconception that as a social enterprise, we don't operate like a 'normal' business, but that’s not true. In many ways, most of our choices are the same — we still need to make money and sell phones — but the outcome and the goals are different. Our focus is investing in social innovation, instead of purely technical innovation. When other phone companies design a new phone, they research new technology — we research supply chain improvement.[6]"A survey conducted by Franziska Verna Haucke in the Journal of Cleaner Production found: "A sustainable lifestyle represents the dominant factor explaining the involvement with the Fairphone. Surprisingly, the findings show that alternative consumption seems to negatively influence the involvement with the Fairphone and social commitment seems to play a minor role in the model. These aspects point to the Fairphone as a technical artifact, centered on a choice for a sustainable lifestyle.[2]"Shiftphone is another small mobile telephone manufacturer with a focus on sustainability, who also developed a modular smartphone. The founder of Shiftphone considers that the two companies working in collaboration could have more influence on bigger competitors.[9]

type	Private
industry	Telecommunications equipment
founded	January 2013
key people	Bas van Abel (co-founder) Miquel Ballester Salvà (co-founder) Raymond van Eck (CEO)
hq location city	Amsterdam
hq location country	Netherlands
revenue	€55 million (2023)‡R1R‡
area served	Western and Central Europe except Malta and Cyprus
products	Smartphones, headphones

History

Products

Corporate affairs

Recognition and certifications

Operating systems

See also

External links

References