Nothing's logo (Source: Nothing)
Yes, Nothing, is the name of Carl Pei's next company. OnePlus' co-founder is still working in tech, but he's saying nothing much about this new venture. But we know its first smart devices are coming out in the first half of this year.
What these devices are we don't know or who their competition is, we don't know. Pei is confirming that there will be products in different categories to build an ecosystem of devices eventually. Software subscriptions aren't part of its initial plans, but Pei understands there needs to be a mix of good hardware and software.
The company describes itself as a "London-based consumer technology company." It includes the following prominent names as investors: iPod inventor Tony Fadell, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, and YouTuber Casey Neistat.
Nothing plans to differentiate itself from the competition by using "custom-made" components from the get-go, suggesting its products won't look too similar to its competitors.
"There's a reason why a lot of products on the market look quite similar," Pei observes. "It's because they share a lot of the same components and the same building blocks."
Pei's former company, OnePlus, is owned by Chinese corporate giant BBK Electronics, which also owns OPPO and Vivo. So, OnePlus has been criticized for releasing devices that look similar to OPPO's phones.
But he doesn't want their products to be "different for the sake of being different." His eventual hope is their products sort of fade into, well, nothing.
"I kind of envision a grass field with people having a picnic and there's no screen, there's no laptop screen, there's no phone screen, there's no smartwatch screen, there's no billboard screen," Pei muses. "That's kind of the end state."
The Verge points out that this refers to Walt Mossberg's idea of ambient computing.