Nothing To Spin Off CMF into Standalone Indian Company: CEO Carl Pei

New Delhi: Smart devices company Nothing will hive off its subsidiary CMF into a standalone Indian company to develop it as a global consumer electronics brand from the world's second largest smartphone producing nation, a top official of the company said on Monday.

Nothing CEO Carl Pei, who co-founded the OnePlus smartphone, reiterated that CMF will stop as a product line of the company and will be incorporated in India with majority of Indian shareholders.

Nothing sub-brand CMF deals in affordable and medium range smart phones.

"I'm not Indian. I'm a Swede who spent eight years in China and runs a company from London. So let me be plain about why I care. I know what it takes. And we've already built the pieces that are missing. We think we can be India's partner in this. So we're spinning CMF out of Nothing into a standalone Indian company: majority Indian owned, headquartered in India, with its own team and R&D in the country," he said in a blog.

Pei quit OnePlus and formed smart devices brand Nothing in 2020.

"Nothing stays as a shareholder and partner. CMF becomes Indian," he said.

Pei had met Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in September 2025 and discussed with him plans to establish CMF as a subsidiary headquartered in India .

London-based Nothing had also announced a manufacturing joint venture with Indian electronics manufacturer Optiemus Infracom a year ago to make India a global production and export hub for both Nothing and CMF products.

The two partners had announced plans to invest over USD 100 million (about Rs 887 crore) in the venture, which is expected to create more than 1,800 jobs in India by 2028.

The latest blog from Pei follows the Indian government announcing a provision under Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme to invest in building a local smartphone brand that can compete in the global market.

Last month, Vaishnaw had said indigenously designed mobile phones with Indian companies owning their IP rights are expected to hit the market in 10-14 months under the Rs 62,500-crore Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme (MPMS).

He had said the government will be rigid on screening Indian brands and will not allow "copycats" to get any benefit under the scheme.

Pei said every country that has manufactured consumer electronics at scale has eventually produced its own global champions.

"Japan did. Korea did. China did, and I watched it happen over the better part of a decade living there. India is next. It's already the world's second largest smartphone manufacturer, with the largest youth population on earth and one of its deepest software talent pools. What it doesn't have yet is a global consumer electronics brand of its own. That will change. The only questions are when, and how?" he said.

Pei said India has the manufacturing base, a market 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," he said.

He said that real research and development is the ability to design, engineer and keep improving a product in-house.

"It's what separates a company that lasts from one that rides a moment. Nothing has built exactly that, and shipped it to millions of people worldwide. Now the opportunity is to take it to India and scale it 100x," Pei said.

According to Counterpoint Research, Nothing was India's fastest-growing smartphone brand in June 2026 quarter at 105 per cent YoY, driven by strong demand for the Phone (4a) and Phone (4a) Pro models, and enhanced brand visibility provided by its title sponsorship of the RCB cricket team during the Indian Premier League (IPL).

Pei said that in 2015 Indian brands sold close to half the smartphones in the country and one of the brands was briefly the best-selling brand in India, ahead of Samsung.

"It looked like the start of something. It wasn't. Within two years, foreign brands arrived with what the domestic ones lacked: real engineering. A genuinely better phone every year, with new camera systems, tighter integration, better design. 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 per cent of a market they once led," he said.

Pei said India is the best place left for a new entrant to do it, and the only way to get there and stay there is to build in India, not ship to India.

"Foreign brands have come to India for its demand before. They shipped what they had, kept the engineering offshore, and left India with assembly lines and little upstream of them," he said.

Pei said a brand that owns its research and development can build something new, cut cost by removing markup rather than quality, and get better every year.