Nothing Bets Big On India, To Launch Snapdragon 8 Series Powered Phone (2) Later This Year

Nothing is betting big on India as it plans to launch its second phone this year.

Tech entrepreneur and CEO of Nothing, Carl Pei, recently spoke about the Indian market and its importance for his company.

Pei also revealed that Nothing, which launched Phone (1) last year, will launch the Phone (2) later this year with a Snapdragon 8 series chipset.

In an interview with Tech Crunch, Pei said that Nothing, which last year launched its Phone (1) in the country, has manufacturing in India and about half of the company's phones are made in India.

"We’re building a manufacturing team in India to manage the factory. We have sales and marketing over there. And we have testing for some of our software and aftersales," he said.

Pei emphasised that India was a key market for his previous company OnePlus and expressed confidence that Nothing would get similar support from Indian consumers.

"There was a strong affinity for OnePlus in India. From a consumer side, we knew there was interest in what we were going to build, and from the partner side, from the sales channel side, they believe in our team based on what we did in the past, so they will support us again on this new journey," he said.

Pei said that he sees good long-term potential in India due to its economic growth despite global downturn and the rise of the middle class in the country.

"I see a good long-term potential, yeah. And then the market this year, India’s economy is going to grow by 6 per cent. And a lot of economies are shrinking. They still have a lot of growth ahead of them as a nation. And also they have a very young population, and I think the middle class . . . will keep growing in size," Pei said.

Asked about whether the company considered launching a second budget variant of its phone in India, Pei said ,"We did but I think that’s the easy way, but it also has long-term negative repercussions. For yourself as a company, if consumers only buy you because you’re cheap, then what’s your business model? A company needs to be profitable. So if you’re cheap today, then tomorrow somebody else can be even cheaper".

"And then this is like the fight for whoever makes the least amount of money or even loses money. So I think we’re taking a much more difficult route; we need to make our products different. And we need to create things that are useful for the customer. And we’ll know if it’s useful if they want to pay for it," he said.

"It’ll be slower this way, but I think we’ll have a much stronger brand and much stronger product in the long-term if we do this, and also a healthier company, in terms of profitability," he added.