There are some exemplary cases for supporting the "mobile-phone-go-green" story: a universal mobile phone charger to be introduced later in the year of 2009, and handsets with built-in solar panels from LG and Samsung.
In addition to these changes on the product level , "green" packaging, together with the use of soy-based inks instead of traditional dyes, is expected to come. So far so good.
This said, it is also suggested this "go-green' story is still far from satisfying, for many of the stakeholders of the mobile phone industry:
However, the mobile phone industry has a long way to go before it can count itself as "green", because the industry retains customers by throwing ever shinier mobile phones at them, based on replacement cycles of one to two years.
Ultimately, "green" phones need to be accompanied with proper recycling programmes. Steps are being taken - just ask your operator how you can dispose of your old handset in an environmentally friendly way - but too many old mobiles are still cropping up in landfill sites in the developing world.
To the e-waste problem, how the mobile phone industry could work out industry-wide solutions, as shown in the case of the universal charger, remains a mystery now. But in the mobile phone industry the recycling programmes will be very likely a central concern in the coming future for the major players.
Even so, there seems nothing special in this "go-green" story. Compared with its counterpart in the beverage industry, carbon labeling is so far a non-issue. Moreover, as far as I know, no incumbent in this industry reported explicit commitments for carbon reduction on production and/or logistics processes (indeed, I hope I am wrong), but commitments of this kind have already been business as usual in the PC industry. For the mobile phone industry as a whole, the "greening" of supply chains might belong to the next chapter of the story, at least for now.
What is more interesting in this story could come from an unexpected corner. ZTE, China's biggest handset manufacturer, with its solar-powered base station and $40 solar-powered mobile phone for the poor in the emerging markets, could put itself into a position to build up competitive advantage by providing affordable "green telecom" solutions for the bottom of the pyramid of the world.
Yet, similar attempts on the BOP markets had been made before, and the experience suggests whether this business strategy could link with social enterprise initiatives such as Grameen Telecom would determine significantly the very nature and degree of its potential "social impacts," and thus its business bottom line.
Will ZTE do this? It is not clear. But under the pressure of the serious economic downturn in the developed economies the mobile phone industry needs to search for new markets and new products. As such bringing "green telecom services" to millions without reliable power supplies shall never be regarded as a trivial enterprise, even from a conventional business perspective. And hopefully the affordable "green telecom" could re-define the terms of CSR in the mobile phone industry for the next decade, or even beyond.
