CMF will be a standalone Indian company, says Carl Pei

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CMF will be a standalone Indian company, says Carl Pei | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Nothing will turn CMF into a standalone Indian company with majority stake owned by Indians, based locally, with its own team and R&D in the country, said Carl Pei, CEO of Nothing. In an open letter, he pointed that while India being the second largest smartphone manufacturer yet it doesn’t have a global consumer electronics brand of its own.

Nothing will remain a shareholder and partner in CMF, and it will aim to produce 100 million devices a year, he added.

He wrote that it can only be possible through research and development with an ability to design, engineer and keep improving a product in-house.

Mr. Pei noted that in 2015, Indian brands sold close to half the smartphones in the country, and one of them was briefly the best-selling brand in India, ahead of Samsung. But within two years, foreign brands arrived and turned things in their favour. He says that Indian brands at that time lacked real engineering.

“The domestic brands were licensing an off-the-shelf design, changing the back cover and adding a logo. By 2025 they held less than 1% of a market they once led.”

Mr. Pei wrote that 99% of phones sold in India are now made in India, up from almost nothing a decade ago. The government made local manufacturing a priority and stayed the course for ten years.

He added that manufacturing is step one; R&D is next with the capability that sets harder problems for suppliers and pulls a full value chain into the country. “Some components are made locally today, but most of the underlying IP still sits offshore, because nobody in India is asking for more than what’s on the shelf.”

India is absorbing over 150 million smartphones a year, and a government determined to make the country a global export hub. What it lacks is the brand to drive the engineering demand.

Nothing’s CEO said that they have their own operating system, Nothing OS, a full in-house Android build with our own camera processing and features, updated on schedule for every device since 2021. “We do our own industrial design. We source and co-engineer displays, chipsets and camera modules directly with the suppliers that make them. And we sell millions of products across the world, India included.”

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