Interesting article about an interview with Bas van Abel from Fairphone on Heise (german)

Found that article about Fairphone, about an interview with Bas… This looks like some communication deficit to me, I guess some of this information might be important for the community, too…

Link: http://m.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Wachstumsschmerzen-bei-Fairphone-Produktion-und-Support-am-Limit-3581468.html

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This was posted before by @urs_lesse. I’ll move those posts here.

@lklaus, please give this topic a more specific title. There have been other heise articles about Fairphone.

:de: Enthält einiges selbst für mich Neues und schockt mich auch ein bißchen:

Insightful even for obsessive Fairphone followers like me and puts things into perspective (German only):

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Some IMO important information translated:

  • Mulan Mu quit because Fairphone “put too much effort into the exterior design of the phone.”
  • Bas van Abel had a burn-out. “One day […] could not move anymore, his wife took him to the emergency admission.” "He had to take a break for several months. Today van Abel remembers that he checked the US Dollar exchange price 40 times a day because the calculation for FP2 depended on it. Instead of thinking about sustainability, he only thought about money anymore. I wanted to become a part of the system to change it, but then the system began to dictate my life."
    Source
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@Stefan, kannst du bitte in deiner Zusammenfassung noch die unerwartet starke Nachfrage ergänzen? Das sieht sonst so negativ aus. Dass so viele Leute jetzt ein FP2 wollen, ist doch toll :slight_smile:.

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Interesting. I missed that, somehow, even though I’m an ardent follower :-)… Sorry for double posting

Good to hear that fairphone has more success than expected, but the most interesting is to read how hard it is for the company. They should communicate more about the problems to gain sympathy and consolidate the base’s involvement.

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I support that idea, tell us what your problems are and keep us updated, I’m sure that WILL work and make Fairphone (re-)gain sympathy and support for keeping up their great idea!

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Probably Fairphone wouldn’t exist without the very active community and the huge amount of time some of its members spend. Therefore for me it appeares quite strange to read at the c’t about Fairphone news the Fairphone community isn’t informed about.
Probably that depends on an inopportune constitutional frame the Faiphone Company is run. It is a private capitalistic company with all load and freedom of decision on the shoulders of only one person.
In reality the companies history and future is depending at a huge amount on the willingness to spend money for the idealistic target to change the way of producing smartphones and to accept disadvantages (“Kinderkrankheiten”) buying and using a complete new smartphone construktion. I feel, that the company structure has to be changed to mirror these dependencies. We should think about an other constitution, a kind of association.
I could imagine, that everybody who feels her/himself connected to the aims of Fairphone could give a limited amount of money into this association to give the company moving space to achieve their goals. On the counterpart the company would be obliged to inform the associates and the Fairphone users about the decisions the company is planning to realize and to guaranty to get back their investments, if they want within a withdrawal notice of i. e. one year with a compensation for inflation but without profit sharing.
Such a constitution has to be developed carefully, but there are existing examples for something like that.
Of course, in the meantime Fairphone needs to be stabilized, that means money. For that I could imagine to sell high advanced modules (i.e. camera, OLED displayes and others) to replace the standard ones. These modules should be sold to a price quite higher than the price Fairphone has to pay. Also it could be payed by real costs and giving back the old functioning module without refund for using it as spare part for broken items.
Could something like that be a solution? What do you think about such strategies?
Heiner

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