Smartphones have now become the new PCs. Commoditisation has happened with smartphones, as now technological leaps are iterative. In fact, for a short while, the demand accelerated for all things tech thanks to the pandemic. While all this has happened, one often speaks of the usual suspects in the industry who have been ruling the roost for the last decade or so. Apple, Samsung, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, Xiaomi, and one would’ve been talking about even Huawei had its smartphone business not been gut-wrenching, thanks to the US-China rivalry and Covid-19.
But since late 2020, there has been a new entrant which has made waves and established partnerships with some of the best in the business. It’s called Nothing, and it is the tech hardware brand that was launched by OnePlus co-founder, Carl Pei.
In 2020, soon after Pei left OnePlus, he launched Nothing, and in 2021 it launched its first product, Nothing Ear (1) true wireless stereo earphones. And immediately, they became a sensation, thanks to a nifty blend of whip-smart marketing, tasteful, in-your-face design and a focus on simplicity.
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Enter Manu Sharma…
By 2021, Nothing was now planning to launch its first smartphone, the Phone (1), which the author has been using as a daily driver since October. This phone managed to support Jio’s new 5G network, almost two months before Apple could activate it on the iPhone. To launch this phone, Pei managed to onboard Samsung veteran Manu Sharma to lead the team in India, which has been earmarked as a key market for the brand.
As the global VP and India GM, Sharma, who before his 9-year stint in Samsung’s India mobile phone business was an ex-APAC executive for HP’s enterprise business, created and cultivated relationships that enabled Nothing to even manufacture the Phone (1) in India.
“I built the team from scratch and put together all the departments. Our first product was the Ear (1), which of course is done fairly well for us. And then we, of course, launched the Phone (1),” said Sharma.
He noted that this was achieved despite the semiconductor crisis and some dirty tactics from rattled competitors who discouraged suppliers from working with the young brand.
“It’s a journey. We are hungry. I think we are just scratching the bottom of the consumer tech industry. And I think it’s also heartening to know that not just consumers, I mean, this lot of competition is noticing us. To the point that competition not just globally is blocking our supply chain. I will say even when we started onboarding some distributors offline, suddenly they were very wary. Don’t do this, don’t work with Nothing,” he revealed.
While Sharma didn’t insinuate who these competitors were, there had been reports of bad blood between Carl Pei and his former employers at the BBK group, which is the parent of the OnePlus and Oppo brands. According to sources, OnePlus tried to sway suppliers to not grant Nothing access to certain components.
Sharma also notes that Nothing as a brand operates at the intersection of technology and art. This is underpinned by the fact that its latest product, the EarStick, is now also being sold on Flipkart-owned Myntra.
Sharma’s deep experience in building sales and distribution channels has allowed Nothing to also bring its Phone (1) to physical retail outlets. As of now, combined, Nothing has sold over a million units globally with a product portfolio that has just three products. It notes Qualcomm, the fabless chipset maker, as its strategic partner.
The Nothing Phone (1) is also being manufactured in India, which is no mean feat. Sharma also revealed that 1/5th of its users are coming from an iPhone, which is staggering for a brand that operates in the sub-Rs 50,000 segment.
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What’s Next?
Nothing recently acquired the ill-fated start-up by Andy Rubin, the founder of Android, called Essential.
Essential had declared bankruptcy in light of the sexual harassment allegations that surfaced against Rubin in 2019. It had been working on an ambient OS for the smart home, which could point toward what could be coming up next in 2023.
But Sharma also doubles down on the fact that Nothing’s north star will be in the smartphone market and also audio will remain a very important category. He added that software will be a big part of the differentiation quotient it brings to the table.
“What we want to do is move forward and elevate the OS game, the software experience. So, coming back to the art, the design will continue to be a very strong differentiator for us, because if you don’t have that, then you’re almost the same as everybody else, right?” Sharma explained.
“Audio is definitely, you can see that we will continue to foray into. The phone is going to be the most important category for us. Because as I said, it allows us to increase the base of our consumers. The overarching message is that we want to build a complete ecosystem of connected devices,” he added.
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The products so far
Nothing in its short existence has impressed. It has propagated a minimal yet futuristic cyberpunk ethos with the design language of its products and is striving to bring an element of simplicity to gadgets that so far one has only experienced with Apple’s products.
The Ear (1), for example, has this unique transparent design and has impressed with the audio quality that has been tuned by the audio alchemists at Teenage Engineering, another Nothing benefactor.
Similarly, its latest product, the EarStick jumps out with its lipstick-like case, which is very convenient to open and close with a true wireless stereo (TWS) that, while skips on active noise cancellation, provides meaty sound with a great balance between a substantial bass and serene mid-range. It is also the type of earphone that has a great fit and could potentially work for serial joggers.
The Phone (1) also carries forward the transparency quotient of the Ear (1) in a design that would remind most of an iPhone. It is bereft of the extra unnecessary cameras that marketing teams advocate for. The back panel of the phone is littered with LED lights that light up as notification indicators, reminding you of strobes at a Berlin underground techno rave. Its software is clean to the level that only a Pixel can perhaps beat it in terms of purity.
And day-to-day use, after some teething software issues, has made it one of the most usable phones, which just works fluidly in a no-nonsense way thanks to the Glyph OS.
Now, one hopes that it can produce a phone that perhaps has a little more performance and even better cameras. But for the layman, Nothing has hit the spot with a decent camera stack and ample performance coupled with great battery life, a superb display, and a design that’s not only elegant but will elicit conversations.
Sahil Mohan Gupta is a Delhi-based technology journalist. He tweets @DigitallyBones. Views are personal.
(Edited by Tarannum Khan)