Fairphones sold 2013-2023

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With the release of Fairphone’s Impact Report vol. 2 [no longer online], we also got a tiny bit of extra numbers on a favourite topic of us statistics obsessed folks: Fairphones sold since the company’s inception. I have combined these with the number of FP3s sold in 2019 that @Stanzi was able to elicit from @lorahaspels in 2020, past sale numbers (2015-2018) from a German newspaper article from late summer 2018 plus the widely known numbers of 25000 FP1s and 35000 FP1Us sold in 2013 and 2014.

The 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 numbers stem from the 2020 (PDF, 13.4 MB), the 2021 (PDF, 4.3 MB), the 2022 (PDF, 8.7 MB) and the 2023 (PDF, 8.4 MB) Fairphone Impact Reports.

I wasn’t able to research an exact number for the oft-forgotten small-scale sale of the final batch of FP1Us in the first quarter of the year 2015, but it was around 1000 devices. Please let me know if you find better data.

As of 31 December 2023:

Totals: FP1: 60,000 | FP2: 114,835 | FP3: 203,653 | FP4: 192,056 | FP5: 46,000
All combined: 616,544

Complementary notes:

  • Each column indicates the number of Fairphones sold in a year (not delivered). Remember while the whole FP1 first edition was sold over the course of the year 2013, the vast majority of these devices were only delivered in early 2014.
  • Fairphone counts devices sold to resellers as sold (so even when those keep sitting on their stock, they count as sold in the stat), so that’s what went into the graph.
  • Where Fairphone’s own numbers (slightly) differ from the 2018 newspaper article, I chose to regard Fairphone’s numbers as more exact and/or more up-to-date
  • I deduced the number of FP2s sold in 2019 by subtracting Lora’s number from the 2019 total released today.
  • I have now re-evaluated my interpretation of Tessa Wernink’s November 2014 blog and reduced the 2014 total from 35000 to 34000.

Feel free to provide more/better data if you have a proper source for it! :slight_smile:

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@lorahaspels’s number was also 200k Fairphones sold in total if you check. So if 182999 FPs sold is the real number, well… There’s a problem :sweat_smile:
Perhaps Lora’s number was more or less approximate and this is where the difference comes from?

(Disclaimer: I didn’t read the report yet.)

I guess resellers will not sit idly on stock forever at their own risk.
In trade, there’s a business model with which you sell stuff for vendors, so you buy the stuff first, then try to sell it with a profit margin, and if you can’t sell everything you bought, you return what’s left after a certain period of time and get reimbursed by the vendors.
I’m missing the technical term for this model at the moment, but there would be a difference if sales numbers wouldn’t be handled consistently regarding such returns.

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I found another article from Forbes stating that Fairphone would have sold 175k FPs end of august 2019. Which would bring us not far from 220k or 230k currently. I don’t know if it’s reliable though and I haven’t found the source of this data yet.

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Probably too simple :angel: but:
Difference between Fairphone’s total and mine: 36351
FP1U total (2014+2015): 36000 (including my vague 2015 FP1U guess)

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You think they wouldn’t have counted the FP1s? That would seem strange…

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Did you count in the numbers for the FP2 New Life edition?

Edit: Ah, just read that the numbers do not include FP2 New Life edition. Sorry!

I think the yearly numbers for the FP1 and FP1U are not correct, because a total of 60,000 was produced. So, where do the 1,000 units come from? (The first generation was sold until February 2015, so I think the number ratio for the years 2014 and 2015 could be a little different.)

I’ve found a better link for the number 35000 and added one for the number 1000 (see starting post). It’s not clear to me whether the final 1000 batch in February 2015 was part of the planned 35000 or on top of it. Either way, it makes for a difference of just 1000, not 36000.

Bas van Abel published an article in February 2015 and mentioned a total of 60,000 Fairphones of the first generation:

That’s the FP1 and FP1U.

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Eva Gouwens just publicly confirmed 90000 Fairphone 3 have been sold so far, so I updated the graph at the top.

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I think now all your numbers are right. 70 000 FP1s, 110 000 FP2s, and 90 000 FP3s, as confirmed by Eva Gouwens.

Eva said “I think 65000 FP1s” (approximately at the 32:16 mark), but I would prefer to rely on the written numbers I referenced at the beginning here. Frankly it seems to me not everyone at Fairphone has a totally definitive number in mind (which I don’t blame them for).

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You are wrong in this point! There is no difference in numbers.
In the impact report you cite 3 bullet poings above ("Bigger market, greater impact), they state:

KPI: We have sold more than 220.000 Fairphones since our foundation in 2013 until the end of 2019.

So it seems, you have done a really good job with your numbers. :smiley:

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Do we agree it wasn’t the case before? They must have done an update with newer numbers.
I remember having seen 182999 FPs sold.

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Yep, I did not check before, so I thought the numbers must have had another source.
The web-archive shows, that on 3rd August the number indeed was 182,999.

I did not mean to criticise @urs_lesse, but rather praise him for his work.

Maybe Fairphone even adjusted their numbers based on this thread and @urs_lesse research ? :wink:
:+1:

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No problem from my side :slight_smile: Thanks for making me aware that Fairphone redacted the total number in their Impact Report.

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Rae gave us the year 2020 total today. I have updated the graph at the top of this topic.

Update (29 June 2021): I have now replaced the number by the marginally different (-15) figure included in today’s 2020 Impact Report (p. 15). There is also a discrepancy between the 2019 and 2020 reports regarding the 2019 total which I am currently trying to get sorted out by Fairphone.

UPDATE (27 August 2021): Discrepancy sorted out – it’s been 53844 units sold in 2019.

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So now im curious how much today. I know there are not much numbers from Fairphone side. Because I want to know jf the FP3 is better sold than FP2