For years, the smartphone industry has operated on a simple, if cynical, premise: make devices sleek, seal them shut, and count on consumers to replace them every two to three years. But a small Dutch company is proving that a growing number of buyers are rejecting that model entirely — and the numbers are starting to matter.
Fairphone, the Amsterdam-based manufacturer that has staked its entire identity on modular, repairable, and ethically sourced smartphones, posted record growth in 2024, a development that has caught the attention of industry analysts and competitors alike. As Android Central reported, the company’s trajectory reflects not just a niche enthusiasm for sustainable tech, but a broader consumer shift toward devices that are designed to last — and designed to be fixed when they don’t.
A Company Built on the Radical Idea That Phones Should Be Fixable
Fairphone was founded in 2013 with a mission that seemed almost quixotic at the time: build a smartphone that could be easily repaired by its owner, sourced from conflict-free minerals, and manufactured under fair labor conditions. The company’s early devices were rough around the edges, often criticized for lagging behind mainstream flagships in performance, camera quality, and design polish. But Fairphone was never trying to compete with Samsung or Apple on spec sheets. It was trying to prove a concept — that consumer electronics didn’t have to be disposable.
Over the past decade, the company has refined its approach considerably. The Fairphone 5, released in 2023, represented a significant leap in both build quality and repairability. The device earned a perfect 10 out of 10 repairability score from iFixit, the gold standard in teardown analysis. Users can replace the battery, screen, camera modules, USB-C port, and speaker using nothing more than a standard Phillips-head screwdriver. No heat guns, no proprietary adhesives, no trips to an authorized service center. Just a screwdriver and a few minutes.
Record Revenue and Expanding Reach in a Saturated Market
The financial results tell a compelling story. Fairphone reported record revenue growth, driven by expanding sales across Europe and increasing carrier partnerships. The company has secured distribution deals with major European telecom operators, giving it shelf space alongside the dominant Android brands. This is a critical milestone for a company that once relied almost entirely on direct-to-consumer online sales and a loyal but limited base of environmentally conscious early adopters.
According to Android Central’s analysis, Fairphone’s growth isn’t happening in a vacuum. It coincides with a broader regulatory push in the European Union toward right-to-repair legislation, mandatory repairability scores on consumer electronics, and new rules requiring removable batteries in smartphones by 2027. These policy shifts are creating tailwinds for companies like Fairphone that have been building repairable devices from the start, while forcing traditional manufacturers to rethink their design philosophies.
The Right-to-Repair Movement Gains Legislative Muscle
The European Union has been at the forefront of right-to-repair regulation, and 2024 marked a watershed year. The EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, which entered into force, establishes new requirements for product durability, repairability, and recyclability across a wide range of consumer goods, including smartphones. Separately, the EU’s directive requiring that smartphones sold in the bloc must have user-replaceable batteries by 2027 has sent shockwaves through an industry that has spent the better part of a decade gluing batteries into ever-thinner chassis.
In the United States, the right-to-repair movement has gained momentum at the state level. Oregon, California, Minnesota, and New York have all passed right-to-repair laws of varying scope, and federal legislation has been introduced, though it has yet to clear Congress. Apple, which long resisted the movement, launched its Self Service Repair program in 2022 and has gradually expanded it, though critics argue the program remains cumbersome and expensive compared to the kind of user-friendly repairability Fairphone offers out of the box.
Why Mainstream Manufacturers Are Slowly Changing Course
Fairphone’s success is forcing a broader conversation within the industry. Samsung has made incremental moves toward repairability, partnering with iFixit to offer genuine replacement parts for select Galaxy devices. Google has done the same for its Pixel line, and the company’s Pixel phones have seen improving repairability scores in recent generations. Even Apple, historically the most resistant to user-serviceable design, has made its latest iPhones somewhat easier to open and repair, though the company still relies heavily on software locks and parts pairing that can limit the effectiveness of independent repairs.
But none of these companies have gone as far as Fairphone. The modular design philosophy — where individual components can be swapped out independently, extending the useful life of the device by years — remains unique in the mainstream market. Fairphone has committed to providing software updates for the Fairphone 5 for at least eight years, and spare parts availability for at least 10 years. That’s a starkly different value proposition from the typical Android phone, which might receive three to four years of software updates before being effectively abandoned by its manufacturer.
The Economics of Longevity vs. Planned Obsolescence
The economics of the smartphone industry have long been built around replacement cycles. Carriers subsidize devices, manufacturers profit from new sales, and the entire ecosystem — from chipmakers to accessory brands — benefits from a steady churn of new hardware. A phone that lasts seven or eight years is, in a very real sense, a threat to that business model. Fairphone’s argument is that this model is unsustainable, both environmentally and, increasingly, economically for consumers who are tired of spending $800 to $1,200 every two to three years on a device that offers only marginal improvements over its predecessor.
The environmental case is straightforward. The production of a single smartphone generates roughly 70 to 80 kilograms of CO2 equivalent emissions, according to multiple lifecycle analyses. The vast majority of a phone’s environmental impact occurs during manufacturing, not during use. Extending the life of a device from three years to six years effectively halves its annualized carbon footprint. Fairphone has also invested heavily in sourcing fair-trade gold, recycled rare earth metals, and conflict-free tin and tungsten, addressing supply chain concerns that have plagued the electronics industry for decades.
Challenges Remain, but the Trajectory Is Clear
Fairphone is not without its challenges. The company’s devices are still primarily available in Europe, with limited distribution in North America and Asia. Its market share, while growing, remains a fraction of a percent of global smartphone sales. The Fairphone 5 is priced at around €700 (roughly $760), which puts it in competition with mid-range to upper-mid-range devices from Samsung, Google, and OnePlus — phones that often offer superior cameras, faster processors, and more polished software experiences. For many consumers, the ethical and practical appeal of repairability still doesn’t outweigh the raw performance and feature advantages of mainstream alternatives.
There’s also the question of whether Fairphone’s model can scale. Manufacturing modular devices with user-replaceable components requires a fundamentally different approach to industrial design and supply chain management. Maintaining spare parts inventories for a decade is expensive. And as the company grows, it will face increasing pressure to deliver the kind of fit-and-finish that consumers have come to expect from premium devices, without compromising on the repairability that defines its brand.
A Signal the Industry Cannot Afford to Ignore
Still, Fairphone’s record growth in 2024 sends an unmistakable signal. Consumers — at least a meaningful and growing segment of them — want phones they can fix. They want devices that are designed to last. And they are willing to put their money where their values are. As right-to-repair legislation continues to advance on both sides of the Atlantic, and as the environmental costs of electronic waste become harder to ignore, the question is no longer whether the smartphone industry will embrace repairability. It’s how fast.
For Fairphone, the vindication is long overdue. For the rest of the industry, the message is clear: the era of the disposable smartphone may finally be drawing to a close. The companies that adapt earliest will be best positioned to capture a generation of consumers who have decided that a phone worth buying should be a phone worth keeping — and worth fixing.
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