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I would agree with you if they were just a regular small phone design company, but the way things are going they are one bad device away from going out of business and even without that their support for older phones has been spotty at best, and I say that as a Fairphone owner.

It would be much more credible if they continued selling it. Stopping to sell it basically means they have a small stock of spare parts left and the commonly replaced parts like batteries and usb ports will probably going to be difficult to get soon.

It was a side grade performance wise, but they removed useful features like display out and usb3. Only the battery in the FP6 is slightly larger, but at the disadvantage of coming in a custom housing with makes it harder to replace.

If they can only make money by releasing new phones, there is no business incentive for them to keep selling and supporting the older models beyond the bare minimum. In fact this is already happening with the FP5 being discontinued a mere 2-3 years after release despite being better than the FP6 in many ways.

Dunno, their financials seem shakey if you look at them multi-year. It seems to always jump in the first year they release a new model and then dips into the negative again.

This might be ok for a normal botique mobile phone producer, but it really disincentives them from their core mission of sustainable and long lasting phones that don’t need replacement every 2 years.