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Fairphone CEO Raymond van Eck tells WIRED that he sees his company’s products as a good alternative for consumers who are feeling the pinch of the current economy. “If you look to the US market, it’s heavily duopolistic with very little real consumer choice,” van Eck says. “Americans are exhausted by planned obsolescence, closed-box ecosystems, and expensive yearly upgrades.”
The US is a tough market to crack, with a duopoly held by Apple and Samsung. It’s worse for phone brands not sold through US carriers, which is how most Americans acquire new phones; carriers drive as much as 66 percent of smartphone sales according to a 2025 report from the International Data Corporation. This situation has forced many companies to pull out: OnePlus recently announced its decision to exit the North American market, following several other phone makers over the last few years, including HMD Mobile, Sony, and LG Mobile. To counter that narrative, van Eck says Fairphone is already in discussions with major carriers and mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) to sell its device through their stores.
While Google’s Android powers the company’s mobile hardware, there’s a version you can buy powered by Murena’s de-Googled /e/OS for $699. Fairphone also has a few features of its own. For example, you can flip a physical switch on the Fairphone (Gen 6+) to enable Fairphone Moments, a minimal interface designed to reduce digital distractions. Van Eck hopes the minor performance boost in the Gen 6+ will help it support more advanced software features—such as AI-powered capabilities that often require more RAM. Speaking of, he says Fairphone isn’t immune to the challenges of the global memory crisis, but its “deep relationships” with suppliers have tremendously helped the company secure components.
“We do not view our codependence on US technology as a compromise or a downside, but as a powerful synergy,” van Eck says. “You could say we take the best of US innovation, which drives the industry performance, and we wrap it with European care for planet and people. This creates, I would say, a stronger product than either side could build in isolation.”
The company is finally growing, too, thanks to a newfound marketing strategy of focusing on the quality of the product, rather than the company’s ethical mission. It’s seeing growth year-over-year for the fourth quarter in a row, with phone shipments jumping 74 percent in the first half of 2026 compared to the prior year. Van Eck says 80 percent of people who bought the Fairphone Gen 6 are also new to the brand.
“We are really now expanding toward a more mainstream crowd,” he says. “That is helping us tremendously and also giving a lot of confidence that we are really on the right path.”
The Gen 6+ arrives only a year after the Gen 6, but van Eck says the company still plans to stick to its cadence of launching new phone generations every 2 years, and is not moving to a yearly device launch like many of its big tech counterparts.
