Nothing Phone (2) coming to US this year, says CEO Carl Pei
“We decided to make the U.S. our No. 1 priority in terms of markets,” said Nothing CEO Carl Pei in an interview with Inverse. This won’t happen with the Phone (1), it’s just not built with support for bands used by US carriers (you can get one for $300, but it’s intended as a beta test). It will be the Nothing Phone (2), coming in late 2023, that targets the US market specifically.
Nothing sells its TWS buds in the US, in fact, the US accounts for a third of all sales. Pei sees this as a sign that the Phone (2) will see a similar success in the new market.
The new model will be more premium than the original – Pei is reluctant to call it a “flagship” as the company aims for a refined software experience and innovative hardware design rather than getting the best hardware at any cost.
Why wasn’t the Phone (1) designed with the US market in mind? Nothing just didn’t have the resources. US carriers demand that phones go through a certification process and mandate that certain features must be included in the software.
Nothing Phone (1)
Pei says that in the beginning there were only 5 engineers on the mobile team, so work on Nothing OS had to be outsourced. But now the team has been expanded and now there are 100 people working on the software. Nothing’s Android 13 beta is completely made in house.
The company has grown since its start just a couple of years ago. It had 200 employees in 2021 and has grown to 400 today. Its revenue has grown significantly too, from $24 million in its first year to $200 million in 2022. Now the company has the resources to take on a new market.
And Pei sees an opening – he cites research that suggests that US consumers are starting to get bored with the Apple/Samsung duopoly. They mostly have Motorola and OnePlus as alternatives, soon Nothing will join the fray.
Part of the growth plan includes opening more brick and mortar stores. Its first store, the one in Soho in London, has been doing okay (foot traffic is helped by being located next door to a Supreme store), but the CEO says that more products are needed to push the store into profitability.
Follow the Source link for more from the interview with Carl Pei.
