I beg to differ, Fairphone thinks it's economically viable to make phones that are upgradeable by changing modules. The company is doing it now!
All I want is a spare slot inside one of these phones that I can insert a specialized module. There would be no problem in getting specialized manufacturers to make those modules, witness the fact that there are already thousands of small modular devices on the market already.
If Fairphone were to provide a slot I'm damn sure there'd be call to use it. Think Raspberry Pi and all its ports, just transfer the concept to a phone that's almost suitable now.
Fairphones devices are, frankly, bad value and not particularly interesting. Being able to “upgrade” components is not very useful, if those components are already years behind. Also, fairphone doesn’t allow this! You just can replace components with the same kind… which just makes repairing easier.
> All I want is a spare slot inside one of these phones that I can insert a specialized module. There would be no problem in getting specialized manufacturers to make those modules, witness the fact that there are already thousands of small modular devices on the market already.
You have one. It’s called the USB-C port. Make whatever you want with it, it’s widely supported and compatible.
Imagine somebody asking for phones that have a built-in Swiss army knife because there is a (tiny) segment of the market who would benefit from it.
Before it makes sense to integrate these features to the phone, you would expect to see a thriving ecosystem of third-party external dongles providing the same, for example.
The market is not more diverse because there is no money to be made by making it more diverse. You underestimate the cost just as much as you overestimate the size of the market segment that wants those features.