Will the smartphone Ecodesign Regulation end budget phones?

curious what people think? the new regulations come into effect next month, Mudita do not need to comply because they launched just before the enforcement so its not relevant for the Kompakt but will be for all new phones from next month.

but the EU regulations will require all phones launched from June to have

  • 5 years of OS updates, including 5 years of security commitment,
  • access for professional repairers to software and firmware required for repair
  • spare part availability for 7 years after the end of sale of the product
  • repair documentation
  • part availability to both consumers and professionals (depending on tier)
  • various labelling regulation
  • various hardware durability requirements

All good things, however, if you have a look at who can actually comply with this, I wonder if it will see the end to most budget phones?

Fairphone is probably the only company currently which comes anywhere close to meeting the regulations as is, and even then I don’t think they fully comply (but likely will but just some minor changes). But they designed their company and logistics with repairability in mind in the first place. This simply will never exist for the white label brands and €80 flip phones.

for Mudita it also means likely a fair change in how they approach any future mobile products

I expect the larger brands will simply soak up the changes. Sony for example already does spare parts for many of its products.

but my expectation is we will no longer see cheap phones (and I consider the Kompakt on the just on the line of ‘cheap’ side in terms of price) with the additional requirements and overhead going forward.

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Interesting. I wonder if this played into a May release running software with mixed reviews.

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Wow, these regulations are actually amazing

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yeah overall I think these are good things, but there’s an obvious overhead added to companies providing these devices, not that that overhead shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

I am expecting though that this might be the end of cheap phones in the EU

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Yes, in the EU. Pulling from a commentary about large companies loving regulations…

…what worries business is not whether they’re allowed to do something or not: but that other people will find a better way of doing it and thus compete. More regulation means that fewer upstarts can enter the market and any that do are hobbled by that regulation. The more regulation the more the current large companies can continue to be capitalist without having to worry about their practices being tempered by that market competition.

Which is, as I say, why large companies just love regulation. The problem here is of course that it’s also large companies that do all the lobbying. Further, that it’s the small and new companies that do most of the innovation and nearly all of the job creation.

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The HMD Fusion costs around 200 € and it’s quite close to comply with these regulations. So it is not impossible.

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Their spare parts might be close to meeting the requirements but I’m not sure anything else is, though good catch on another potential company closer to these regulations.

The issue with HMD I think is that their last financials show significant operating losses and they have been heavily reliant on investor capital. This is useful to get up and running and provide cheap products but to be self sustaining they need more income. These regulations will only add mandatory costs onto their business.

I can’t imagine their phones will stay the same price long term.

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