Fairphone investment

Maybe there will be an expansion into a significant yet unexplored market … :angel:

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Today at 00:30 hours the total of the loan is € 953.041.
The 1.000.000 is to be reached sometime today.
Which I find marvellous for Fairphone and us consumers.

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I am a bit skeptical if this will have the expected effect.
Here are already voices coming up asking for more functionality of the FP2 or when will the FP3 be available and about its features.
Some users and watchers say that FP2 is outdated and way too expensive these days. Even the fairness part is moving into the background when comparing prices.
It´s rather functionality and fashion being missed.
Actually time is working against FP here.
We have our spare parts and revised display, battery, camera. But considering the past time and the modularity let alone the internal extension option
there is more possible and more was expected.
I am afraid it will be very hard to expand into other markets with the existing model as I think expectations are higher there or at least becoming steadily higher. I could read about moving into the Scandinavian market.
I have experienced more than ten years ago the Swedish are used to pay cash-free. Bus tickets, food etc. They are up to converting almost 100% into a cash-free zone. Offering a FP2 there without the rising NFC feature won´t work. Who knows how far the other countries up there are only in this approach as they like to travel between their countries and often show up as pioneers in many developments. I hardly see a chance to expand there. If this plan is true FP3 will surely bring NFC or there will be no chance for it.
The Asian market as I think atm won´t be a target for any actual FP product or future products within the next few years to come. It´s a key market for production, but many workers in these countries cannot even afford the products they are dealing with at their jobs. There is hardly a chance that many there will be investing their money in an European product of this type and price class, let alone if not being top notch.
How would it look like in an Asian store almost full of high class mobiles to see a FP2/3 among them with its feature and price tag? The fairness factor in these regions still is highly neglected (just recall what FP actually is tackling and where…). Atm I don´t see a chance for FP to compete with the local Asian market.
Also thinking of all the other brands directly being produced and offered in front of the Asians doors: Samsung, Huawei, HTC, OnePlus etc.
Also the major customs debate is not yet showing its full effect.

The eastern market as I know it seems rather to be a region with limited prosper. There are very wealthy individuals probably focusing on and presenting themselves with the newest most state-of-the-art items (mobiles). FP2 cannot keep up here. FP3 is planned as being a more affordable model. Maybe it´s interesting for those as a nice-to-have handset, but such things often don´t last for long being resold or even dumped in such groups of peoples. No good for better ecology goals imo.
The not so wealthy people in the east I assume will look out for the best value for money. Who knows after all how much priority they will put on fairness. At last they have to work (maybe even struggle) for their bit of pocket money. Trues will show if and how FP3 places itself there. I wouldn´t rely too much on guesses if I were running a company.
I also want to share my view of chances in the US market.
FP2 is not very common there as the design natively don´t even support all available frequency bands. So a noticeable amount of potential customers are lost already. I guess for FP2 this cannot be changed anymore. Being limited to very few operators and also having to tweak the individual setup to get FP2 to work with them may not keep potential customers attracted. Most other models being offered there will at least work flawless for the home market.

So there is only FP3 that could bring a chance. Of course with NFC functionality. Paying cash in the US is very uncommon and often seen as being a left-over from the stone-age. A tiny bubble gum there can be paid for cash-less. But look in front of the door: Oh, say hello to Apple and Google. Now this looks like David against Goliath twins. To even have a chance for the targeted affordable FP3 to get attention I believe it still have to offer enough functionality and options. I would say anything less than what FP2 actually is offering won´t do. Not even I would buy it then. As it looks some features meanwhile have become some kind of a standard. First to mention Dual-Sim, better camera, better display, water-proof, more ram, USB-C, VoWiFi. Other features are available too not necessarily pumping up the overall price.

I believe this will be very challenging for the FP3 to find its place here. Even more if there is only one model to serve all markets. (I would rather go for two versions).
Although its price is planned to be lower than for the FP2 there are key features users these days don´t want to sacrifice on. I´m afraid the lower price
won´t help here.
FP2 is not too old yet, but also not close to common state-of-the art models.
Making more use of the unique modularity could speed down the aging process keeping it attractive for some longer. Unforeseen effects such as e.g. troubles in the supply chain held up FP. Nevertheless more advanced modules should appear and hardware extensions issued.
An upgrade to Nougat pays out positive as I believe and regular security updates should then again be offered. So being one of the few phones receiving them regularly stays a positive to mention attribute.

If modular functionality moves on with time and users are satisfied with their user experience I think they won´t question the central chip set too much.
What I could experience up to now, most people crossing my path don´t even know much about the specific SoC in their handset, but the type of display, storage size, camera etc.
FP2 has more potential which is unused (wasted) until now. We know how glad FP1 users were when FP decided to drop support for different reasons.
If FP3 will be available causing a shift on focus for the FP2 which potential never was fully used, there is a risk of more users to turn away and simply stick to conventional phones. With them they are prepared that support is not for long and for the (lower) price there is a bit more value and as development moves on with every new phone the value also increases not necessarily being reflected in a higher price.
It´s not easy to argue with fairness and other ecological values if longevity turns out being an obstacle.
Something like a “full potential plan” is needed here.

I hope for FP with more funds to find good solutions to master all of these challenges.

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And it’s done: 1.021.371 € at 20:20, 25.7.2018. Let’s see if Fairphone reaches 2 Mio.

According to the newsletter I received today, there was an #ama with @Bas_van_Abel on Facebook at 17:00. It seems that the forum is no longer the first address for an #ama@Monica.Ciovica Any plans for forum #ama’s again?

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Yes, I find it discriminating to have it on FB only because I won’t have the chance read about it let alone participate… worrisome.

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Not to distract from the question raised, but for those who want, today’s AMA was a live video chat (Facebook link) that can still be viewed. I didn’t view it live and haven’t had the time to view it yet myself, so I cannot summarize nor highlight anything from it either.

Which can only be watched with an FB account, it seems?
Interestingly when one goes the extra mile to get rid of Google only to get onto Facebook

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I had actually tried it with a different browser and being logged out, and for me that worked.

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Remember that if they want the FP3 to be more affordable there’s gotta be some time gap between the FP2 and FP3. Else, the performance isn’t much of an upgrade which makes it not so much interesting an upgrade from FP2. And the previous customers are usually loyal customers.

So yeah the Facebook video was mostly finance-related, and I don’t have a background in that. One financial advice I got from the Facebook video was: this is a high risk investment. That disclaimer is also on the Oneplanetcrowd website.

Additionally to the disclaimer, Martin from Oneplanetcrowd adviced in the video:

  1. Never invest more than 10% of your total savings.
  2. Spread at least 10 investments.

They then give an example of a 1000 EUR investment. 10 (investments) * 1000 (amount investing) * 10 (10% of your total savings, making 100%) = 100.000 EUR. So you need 100.000 EUR to start, basically.

I simply don’t have that amount of savings in the short term, and if I did there are some other things on top of my list such as buying our own house instead of renting.

However in the meantime we’ve been wanting to get into the stock market for a long time since interest rates are terrible, but we have zero experience with it, and we want low risk and sustainable.

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Dear Brian,

Thank you so much for your feedback. We send it to the Oneplanetcrowd crew and they just told me they fixed it!
Thank you so much for your kind words and for taking the time to invest even though it was not easy :slight_smile:

Best

Lina

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@Stefan @StephanK @lklaus yes there will be forum AMAs as well. Please keep in mind that we use a variety of channels to communicate with the community, and gather feedback.
It’s always good to experiment with other forms of communication and analyse results. This doesn’t mean one channel will have priority over another.
We have downloaded yesterday’s video and will share it here as well, so you can watch it without having to go through Facebook. Also, for any questions about the campaign, investment, anything, please know you can direct them my way.

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Hi all, please find the AMA video we had with Bas and Maarten (Oneplanetcrowd) on Wednesday here:

For any more questions, send them over :raised_hands:

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Thanks for making this available for everyone :+1:

One more point, I don’t know how others feel about this, but I for my part much prefer text-based AMAs over video. For me, following a video demands much more focus and concentration and time (so far I have only been able to bring myself to view the first 39 minutes – I would have definitely read everything right away had it been a chat transcript). Once you have missed a bit, it is always a big and time-consuming hassle to find it back and re-view/re-listen again, hoping that you understand what’s said at the 2nd/3rd/4th time. This isn’t actually about audio quality, it is always bound to happen when you have no transcript – and when the AMA is text-based in the first place, no one needs a transcript anymore anyway.

Having said that, I do realize that text-based AMAs means fewer questions can be dealt with in the same time (speaking speed > typing speed).

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Is it just my wishful thinking or has crowdloaning actually picked up pace again after a temporary slowdown right after the 1 million mark? :slight_smile:
Screenshot_2018-07-29%20Oneplanetcrowd%20-%20Fairphone%20It%E2%80%99s%20time%20to%20expand%20our%20impact

Well, I would guess, that the slowing down might - at least in part - be caused by the weekend?
And I would say, that it’s still slower than in the beginning, while the recent rise in shares should still be enough, to make it to 2 million; not so sure about 2.5 million.
I wonder, what the next week will bring. :wink:

Really think its NECESSARY to invest. Just for my own interest!
Manufacturing-Quality, Service, Software needs improvement
(New detail: Updates? It WAS working with the beginning of FP2. And now?).
If you looking in this forum, how much people have MUCH service experience (and not only good one) and their 2nd/3rd hardware: Everything in the company (<> movement<>?) seems to crying: Help!>Time!>Money!
If you want to use the phone longer than 1-2 years, you need Displays and updates.
[As a FP1 starter: Batteries…] [[And as a FP2 owner: A iron will not to count reboots.]]
And without this forum… Would be a company right now still exists?
Maybe its possible to get a little bit money with it, maybe it will be zero return. But it could be very important to use the phone still in 2-3 years…

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It seems, the investment is raising steadily, being at more than 1.32 million now. The number of person investing a higher amount is rising as well. And the average for those 14 investors is still around 30,000 Euro. I guess it’s due to advice by oneplanetcrowd?
With 15 days to go, I would not expect 2.5 million to be reached, but 2 million seems realistic.
But who knows, maybe there is a really large investment already fixed and they don’t show it yet, to motivate other investors.
(Just thinking, as I remember they did so on behalf of the FP2, adding 2,000 (not sure about that number) overnight and I know other pages using counters in a similar way.)

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Does YouTube automatically transcribe the audio? It shouldn’t be difficult with recent technology to do speech-to-text, though might all be proprietary software/services/algorithms.

It does do automatic transcription, but editing is usually only available to the video owner (though it can be set to allow community contributions). Outside of the editor, the subtitles contain a lot of tags and text duplications (when text jumps from line 1 to line 2) and little punctuation, so not exactly an easy read (though with enough patience you could build a parser that replaces colour tags with names, removes tags & duplications…)…

00:00:08.630 --> 00:00:11.690 align:start position:0%

hello<00:00:09.630><c> I</c><c.colorE5E5E5><00:00:09.660><c> hope</c><00:00:10.230><c> there's</c><00:00:10.920><c> really</c><00:00:11.370><c> people</c></c>

00:00:11.690 --> 00:00:11.700 align:start position:0%
hello I<c.colorE5E5E5> hope there's really people
 </c>

00:00:11.700 --> 00:00:15.709 align:start position:0%
hello I<c.colorE5E5E5> hope there's really people
joining<00:00:11.940><c> in</c><00:00:12.269><c> this</c><00:00:12.450><c> ask</c><00:00:13.170><c> me</c><00:00:13.349><c> anything</c></c><c.colorCCCCCC><00:00:14.630><c> we</c><00:00:15.630><c> are</c></c>

00:00:15.709 --> 00:00:15.719 align:start position:0%
joining<c.colorE5E5E5> in this ask me anything</c><c.colorCCCCCC> we are
 </c>

00:00:15.719 --> 00:00:18.230 align:start position:0%
joining<c.colorE5E5E5> in this ask me anything</c><c.colorCCCCCC> we are
here<00:00:15.929><c> today</c><00:00:16.139><c> with</c></c><c.colorE5E5E5><00:00:16.580><c> Martin</c><00:00:17.580><c> box</c></c>
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