As the world's largest mobile phone fair hosts the "creme de la creme" in Barcelona, activists slam the dark side of a sector accused of ignoring rights abuses in Chinese factories and Congolese mines.
Just a few blocks from the main Mobile World Congress (MWC), the so-called Mobile Social Congress has even showcased its very own superstar smartphone -- the Fairphone 2, which a Dutch firm tries to manufacture as ethically as possible. The firm's first model tried to use tin and tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that was not linked to the country's armed conflict. For its second phone -- launched in 2015 -- Fairphone used gold extracted from Peru respecting fair trade standards. In its Chinese factory, meanwhile, the company promotes social programmes for employees, bettering worker representation and publishing independent reports on labour conditions.
According to Electronics Watch, a watchdog working to better labour rights in the global electronics industry, workers in many Chinese factories toil for more than 80 hours a week, with low salaries and high exposure to carcinogens. In 2012, Apple even admitted that some of its suppliers had committed labour abuses after a wave of suicides hit Taiwan's Foxconn company, which makes components for the US giant.
The sector is lucrative. In 2015, it contributed $3.1 trillion (2.8 trillion euros) to world output, according to GSMA, organiser of Barcelona's main mobile phone fair. "This industry would be the world's fourth largest economy," says Josep Maria Royo, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona who studies armed conflicts. Royo is also part of a small, local NGO that denounces how the mobile industry indirectly finances armed conflict in the DRC, one of the main producers of cobalt and coltan -- essential components for many smartphones.
In January, Amnesty published a report denouncing conditions in these mines for workers -- many of them children -- who toil away from dawn to dusk, seven days a week, sometimes mistreated.
