Those are good points, but I disagree that individuals cannot influence entrenched players by changing their purchasing decisions. Here's how it can happen:
1. A large chunk of people buy the Fairphone. Let's pretend it's 500,000.
2. Samsung notices this. Of course they don't care about that tiny amount of competition, but they do care about competing with Apple.
3. Samsung commissions a study. They find that of the respondents, 0.5% answer "yes" to "Have you bought, or do you plan to buy a Fairphone or other specialty phone which uses conflict-free materials". When asked "If not, which of the following reasons describes why?", 25% answer "I don't want to take a chance with an unknown manufacturer."
4. From this, they conclude that they can expect to sell roughly 20 million additional phones if they (and they alone among major manufacturers) if they switch to conflict-free materials. That is NSFPMS/HB = 20 million, where
NS = non-Samsung marketshare ~= 75%
FF = Fairphone sales = 500,000
MS = % who would buy a mainstream conflict-free phone = 25%
HB = % who have already bought/will buy a Fairphone = 0.5%
5. Every other major manufacturer does the same calculation, and suddenly conflict-free materials are a standard feature.
Now obviously this is an oversimplification. The numbers are made up, Samsung would also add in some uncertainty about customers doing what they say they will do, I haven't taken into account the cost difference for the materials, those survey questions are atrociously designed, etc. But you get the point.
1. A large chunk of people buy the Fairphone. Let's pretend it's 500,000.
2. Samsung notices this. Of course they don't care about that tiny amount of competition, but they do care about competing with Apple.
3. Samsung commissions a study. They find that of the respondents, 0.5% answer "yes" to "Have you bought, or do you plan to buy a Fairphone or other specialty phone which uses conflict-free materials". When asked "If not, which of the following reasons describes why?", 25% answer "I don't want to take a chance with an unknown manufacturer."
4. From this, they conclude that they can expect to sell roughly 20 million additional phones if they (and they alone among major manufacturers) if they switch to conflict-free materials. That is NSFPMS/HB = 20 million, where
5. Every other major manufacturer does the same calculation, and suddenly conflict-free materials are a standard feature.Now obviously this is an oversimplification. The numbers are made up, Samsung would also add in some uncertainty about customers doing what they say they will do, I haven't taken into account the cost difference for the materials, those survey questions are atrociously designed, etc. But you get the point.