I recommend reading the latest blog on the development of the next Fairphone (Blog). There are several things in it that make me guess the next Fairphone will be as expensive as current or more expensive:
For the new phone, we want to move towards even greater transparency in
the supply chain to better enable us to extend our social and
environmental impact. In this way, designing the phone ourselves allows
us to create more visibility in our own supply chain.
I applaud that approch, but it will come at a cost: Developing a smartphone is not cheap. And keep in mind the current Fairphone was an upgrade model of a model produced in much larger volume for the chinese market. The next Fairphone will be more unique in design and hardware and that means probably a more complicated production.
We believe that our new phone should have 4G LTE to be a long-lasting
device, so this year’s phone will have these frequency bands.
I guess they want keep dual sim. It seems important for second markets and additionally, it is clear from our wishlist that LTE and dual sim are important for us. LTE chipsets alone are more expensive, now weight in dual sim and you do not have a wide selection of chipsets available. It might be possible to get a chipset roughly as expensive as the one for FP1 was. Certainly not cheaper I believe.
In our product design and engineering, we will put longevity at the
center of our work.[…] One of the choices that follows
from this thinking is that we are making a higher-end product. Doing so
allows a product to last longer and remain competitive in a fast-moving
sector. A high-quality product, which uses high-quality key components
will last longer because in principle, these components and platforms
will be supported for a longer time.
Reading the complaints in this forum and the whishlist, there is good reason for this thinking. So many of us are angry about the bad platform support by mediatek for our chipset. A lot of you have argued that this would not have happened with a higher quality/more expensive chipset. I personally do not see an alternative to that. Also even with a volume of 100.000 devices per year, this is not exactly a high volume product by industrie standards. A higher quality/ higher price device makes the project more attractive for the manufacturers actually building the FP2.
Weight in all the wishes about are more open source friendly approach. This has to be managed, controlled and executed. It does not come for free. For example support additional OSes like Firefox OS or Ubuntu OS or Sailfish OS will required resources that have to be paid for.
And finally, read the wishlist here and think about how to possibly keep the price point of the FP1. I don’t see that. But keep in mind, that is just me guessing!
Finally, in my opinion, with FP1 many of us bought a phone before we even knew the company could deliver. Not all worked out 100% but i think we and Fairphone learned a lot in that process. I have more confidence in the project now compared to may 2013 when i bought my FP1. I certainly would be willing to pay more (if Fairphone delivers on at least some of the crucial items from that wishlist) knowing it makes an impact. A higher quality phone will also keep second market prices more resonable up. Now, i am not speaking of iPhone prices here (insane 900€ depending on configuration) but well above the 340€ or so i paid for the FP1