The rise of smartphones over the past decade is arguably the most important technological trend since the internet became a global commercial network in the ‘90s. Life as we knew it hasn’t been the same since. A mere 20 years ago, the term smartphone never even existed, let alone the device itself. Now, most people can’t remember the last time they didn’t use their smartphones for an entire day.
At present, “the smartphone” has an estimated 6.4 billion users worldwide, each embracing the tech to connect with each other, acquire information, be entertained, do business and of course, take and post selfies. Yet how often does one consider the journey of how their smartphone came to be – its history before arriving in your hand?
Mobile Technology and the Value Chain
There are essentially three areas that make up the supply chain of a smartphone:
- the extraction of raw materials,
- the manufacture of components and,
- device assembly.
In the supply chain, raw materials extraction such as metals and metal ores is essential to the assembling of a phone’s basic components. Smartphone circuit boards, for instance, utilise copper, gold, lead, silver and palladium. Their lithium-ion batteries are built with cobalt. Often these raw materials come from mines. Chemical reactions form part of the raw materials’ extraction processes, which is where Pure Trade Africa comes in.
We supply the chemicals and manage several logistical components that enable mines to chemically extract metals and metal ores from rock via extractive metallurgy – the practice of removing valuable metals from an ore and refining the extracted raw metals into a purer form.
Once chemically extracted and refined, these metals are then supplied to relevant buyers, who use them as manufacturing components for diverse commodity products like smartphones. Without chemicals to enable the metal extraction processes, smartphones would not be built in the ways that they are (if at all), nor operate in ways that have become so essential to human life. The components that power their technology may be different, which could affect the functionality of the phone, its apps, and other features.
In the smartphone value chain, Pure Trade’s involvement in the procurement of raw materials needed to develop finished goods for end-consumer distribution is critical. We support a lean supply chain across diverse industries, not only the smartphone industry, supplying goods in the most efficient manner possible, with enough flexibility to adapt to sudden changes in our client’s needs and project journeys.
So, the next time you’re FaceTiming over iPhone or snapping clear selfies with a 108-megapixel Android camera, remember that it all potentially started with a chemical process in a mine made possible by materials and services that Pure Trade Africa provides.