Nothing’s Carl Pei Says ‘India Is Inevitable’, Announces CMF Spin-Off As Indian Company

Nothing CEO Carl Pei has outlined an ambitious vision for India’s consumer electronics industry, arguing that the country could eventually produce global technology brands of its own. As part of that vision, Pei has announced that CMF, Nothing’s youth-focused sub-brand, will be spun off into a standalone Indian company.

In a note titled “India Is Inevitable,” Pei argues that countries that have successfully built large consumer electronics industries have eventually produced global brands. He points to Japan, South Korea and China as examples and says India could be next. According to Pei, India already has the manufacturing scale, a large young population and a deep software talent pool. What it lacks, he argues, is a globally recognised consumer electronics company built from India.

Pei says the bigger gap is not manufacturing but research and development. He argues that several Indian brands lost ground because they relied heavily on off-the-shelf hardware and designs instead of developing their own engineering capabilities. Citing the smartphone market, Pei says Indian brands accounted for close to half of smartphone sales in India in 2015 but had fallen to less than 1 per cent by 2025. He attributes the decline to international competitors bringing stronger engineering, camera systems, software integration and industrial design.

According to Pei, meaningful R&D means developing expertise across areas such as structural engineering, thermal management, camera systems, imaging pipelines, operating systems and antenna design, while also working directly with component suppliers. He argues that companies that primarily select components and designs from manufacturing partners eventually compete largely on price, while companies with their own engineering capabilities can build differentiated products and stronger supplier ecosystems.

Pei also points to China as an example of how such an ecosystem can develop. He recalls moving from Stockholm to Shenzhen in 2012 and says that by the time he left China in 2020, Chinese suppliers had become major players in components such as OLED displays, camera modules and in-display fingerprint sensors. According to Pei, demanding engineering requirements from smartphone companies helped local suppliers build capabilities that eventually served the wider global industry.

CMF To Become An Indian Company

The centrepiece of Pei’s India strategy is the separation of CMF from Nothing. He says CMF will become a standalone company that will be majority Indian-owned, headquartered in India and supported by its own local team and R&D operation. Nothing will remain a shareholder and partner in the new company.

Pei says the new company will retain engineering capabilities and relationships developed under Nothing, including its operating system expertise, industrial design capabilities, supplier relationships and global brand experience. He describes the ambition as creating a company that is “owned in India, run from India, engineered in India.”

The announcement comes as India has become a major global smartphone manufacturing hub. Pei claims that 99 per cent of smartphones sold in India are now made in the country, but argues that manufacturing is only the first stage of building a broader electronics ecosystem. The next step, according to Pei, is developing intellectual property, engineering capabilities and supplier relationships within India.

Pei also says CMF was built on Nothing’s existing engineering and design foundation and claims it was India’s fastest-growing smartphone sub-brand in 2025. The company now wants to use India not simply as a major market or manufacturing base, but as a centre for developing and scaling products for global markets.

Nothing Sets Sights On 100 Million Phones

Pei’s long-term ambition is significantly larger. He identifies 100 million smartphones a year as a crucial threshold for creating a full technology platform rather than simply becoming another customer of the existing supply chain.

At that scale, Pei argues, suppliers can develop components specifically around a company’s requirements, while software, camera and AI teams can spread their development costs and capabilities across a much larger installed base.

Pei believes India has the ingredients to build such a company, but says reaching that scale will require companies to build in India rather than simply sell products to Indian consumers. His broader argument is that manufacturing, engineering, talent and intellectual property need to develop together if India is to produce globally competitive consumer electronics companies.

For Nothing, the CMF spin-off marks a significant shift in its approach to India. Rather than treating the country primarily as one of its largest markets, Pei is positioning it as the potential home of a new, independently operated consumer electronics company, with ambitions to eventually reach tens of millions of customers globally.