Carl Pei’s Nothing is engaged on a smartphone – TechCrunch

Seven years after cofounding OnePlus, Carl Pei left the smartphone maker in 2020 to launch his personal enterprise. The firm that grew to become Nothing has, to this point, launched a single product: the ear (1) clear earbuds. But it appears the chief is readying a return to the trade the place he made his title.

Nothing has been engaged on a smartphone for over a 12 months and plans to unveil it by subsequent month, a supply with direct data of the matter informed TechCrunch. The entrepreneur has proven off a prototype of the gadget in conferences with a number of key executives from the trade at this week’s Mobile World Congress occasion in Barcelona, in line with a supply near the corporate. TechCrunch has considered a photograph of 1 such assembly.

Details across the forthcoming gadget are skinny, although the supply notes that the product will share an analogous design language and “elements of transparency” seen in Nothing’s first product. Released in 2021, the earbuds have shipped 400,000 items as of late-January, in line with the London-based {hardware} startup.

In an interview with TechCrunch final July, Pei famous that the corporate had a number of completely different gadgets on its roadmap, previous to teasing out the earbuds, “We have a lot of products in the pipeline. Earlier this year, we did a community crowdfunding round where we allocated $1.5 million to our community. That got bought up really quickly. But as part of that funding round, we had a deck with some of the products in development. Our products are code-named as Pokémon, so there are a lot of Pokémon on that slide We have multiple categories that we’re looking at, but we haven’t really announced what those are.”

Pei definitely has the pedigree, as a cofounder and driving drive behind OnePlus. The firm’s first gadget arrived to an already mature — and seemingly saturated — class in 2014. Even so, it managed the troublesome feat of breaking into the U.S. market on the power of flagship construct high quality and mid-tier pricing.  In 2021, OnePlus merged its {hardware} crew with Oppo, its majority proprietor. Oppo, in flip, is owned by BBK, which can also be behind key manufacturers like Vivo, Realme and iQOO.

The conferences come throughout a very staid version of MWC. The trade has suffered from years of stagnating and declining gross sales, which have solely been exacerbated by pandemic shopping for habits and subsequent provide chain slowdowns and chip shortages. The smartphone market is well-positioned for disruption, however doing will probably be herculean job, as handsets have grown from novelty to ubiquity and good high quality merchandise could be had for reasonable. Nothing definitely has adequate funding to make splash, nonetheless. The agency has raised over $70 million from scores of high-profile traders together with GV, Tony Fadell, Casey Neistat, Kevin Lin and Steve Huffman.

It has additionally managed to construct a following of its personal by taking a equally community-driven focus, in addition to a launch schedule and advertising and marketing campaigns clearly knowledgeable by Pei’s curiosity within the sneaker market. But whereas the corporate was capable of drive curiosity in a $99 pair of wi-fi earbuds, doing so within the well-established smartphone world is a special matter solely.

Long time leaders like LG and HTC have fallen away in recent times, whereas even massive names like Google have discovered the trade to be an immense problem. Players like Apple, Samsung and Xiaomi presently dominate international gross sales, adopted by a variety of the aforementioned manufacturers below the BBK umbrella. Last week, newcomer Onward Mobility announced that it was scrapping plans to reboot the BlackBerry model.

Essential, famously, was unable to make a go of issues, regardless of large $300 million in funding, although one can level to loads of missteps and different points with the Andy Rubin-founded firm. Pei’s agency subsequently bought the Essential branding, a transfer he later informed TechCrunch got here when the corporate was contemplating adopting the title of the ill-fated {hardware} maker. Plenty of Essential workers, in the meantime, have gone on to launch their very own new smartphone firm, OSOM, which plans to launch a tool this 12 months.

Nothing declined to touch upon this report.