Swedish Entrepreneur Carl Pei Launches Nothing, Premium Phone At Populist Prices

Swedish tech entrepreneur Carl Pei launches the Nothing smartphone, (photo: twitter @getpeid)

JAKARTA - Swedish technology entrepreneur Carl Pei launched the first smartphone from his new company, Nothing, on Tuesday, July 12. It hopes to break the highly competitive market with new features in its products.

Pei founded smartphone manufacturer OnePlus in 2013 and rivaled Apple and Samsung by offering premium features at half the market price, and became a top seller in several countries including India.

After leaving OnePlus in 2020, he founded Nothing last year with backing from the likes of Tony Fadell, Apple's iPod designer, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, and Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.

Meet Phone (1).

It's pure instinct. Formed as a machine. Told through beautiful symbols. Deeper interactions. And brave simplicity.

Discover more about the Glyph Interface and Nothing OS at https://t.co/WAZe9Avh0J pic.twitter.com/3OHNM5TxZh

— Nothing (@nothing) July 12, 2022

London-based Nothing says its smartphone offers 18 hours of battery use on a single charge, and two days on standby. Meanwhile, for charging, it can reach 50% power in just 30 minutes of charging. The phone also has various remote features including being able to unlock Tesla car doors.

The phone starts at £399, and the company says it's cheaper than premium phones with similar features. There are now more than 200.000 pre-orders for the product.

OnePlus employs a custom strategy by invitation to sell smartphones that create high demand while keeping customers engaged with them.

Following a similar strategy, Nothing held an auction in June for the purchase of 100 new phones.

IDC's Research Director, Navkendar Singh, said Nothing will compete with smartphones produced by Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo.

Gartner has revised its forecast for a fall in global mobile phone sales this year. He predicts the mobile phone market will decline 7.1% from the previous growth of 2.2%.

"The smartphone market is very competitive and dominated by Apple and Samsung which have tremendous resources," said Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight. "In addition to the current macroeconomic situation and cost of living pressures, being successful is going to be a huge challenge."