Much About Nothing
In late 2020 a new UK based brand known as Nothing (pvt) was formed with seed round backing from a Who’s Who of CE industry names including Tony Fadell (Apple team leader for 18 generations of iPod and 3 generations of the iPhone), Steve Huffman (CEO of Reddit (pvt), Kevin Lin (COO of Twitch (AMZN)) and a later round with a collection of highly visible former athletes, DJs, and influencers, along with an investment from Google (GOOG) Ventures totaling ~$143m. To date, the company has released one product, a $99 Bluetooth earbud, compatible with Android and iOS that is ‘carbon neutral’.
Yesterday the company announced plans to release its first (and highly anticipated, according to the company) smartphone product based on the ‘Nothing OS’, an Android based system that “…captures the best features of pure Android, distilling the operating system to just the essentials, where very byte has a purpose…” The OS will be launched in April while the phone release date has not been given. A 27 minute “Truth About Nothing” promo spends most of the time explaining how excited the company is to be the innovator for new technology, but in the last few minutes gives a few hints as to what they are eventually going to release.
A number of references toward Apple’s ‘closed’ ecosystem and how that limits innovation were made while promoting the benefits of using the vast number of Android applications that are already available, but again specifics were again thin. A bit of color was given on apps that might reside on the phone itself, but it seems the real objective is to use the Nothing OS to connect to a wide variety of other CE products, both Android and iOS which would be a valuable product if it is truly compatible with both. We are sure Apple will have some say about the value of its control over the quality of Apple products, while Google is usually happy to promote anything that is Android related.
We expect much of the upcoming focus will be on the Nothing phone (due out in the summer?) but the real key to the company’s survival will be the OS, where many much larger and more financially able companies have tried and failed. That said, we reserve judgement until the OS is released and we can get a better picture as to how it might work with other devices. The phone will likely be a slick and hip new entry into a market of bland new models, but we hope that the promo’s lack of detail and unfocused objectives do not portend another iPhone clone.
Yesterday the company announced plans to release its first (and highly anticipated, according to the company) smartphone product based on the ‘Nothing OS’, an Android based system that “…captures the best features of pure Android, distilling the operating system to just the essentials, where very byte has a purpose…” The OS will be launched in April while the phone release date has not been given. A 27 minute “Truth About Nothing” promo spends most of the time explaining how excited the company is to be the innovator for new technology, but in the last few minutes gives a few hints as to what they are eventually going to release.
A number of references toward Apple’s ‘closed’ ecosystem and how that limits innovation were made while promoting the benefits of using the vast number of Android applications that are already available, but again specifics were again thin. A bit of color was given on apps that might reside on the phone itself, but it seems the real objective is to use the Nothing OS to connect to a wide variety of other CE products, both Android and iOS which would be a valuable product if it is truly compatible with both. We are sure Apple will have some say about the value of its control over the quality of Apple products, while Google is usually happy to promote anything that is Android related.
We expect much of the upcoming focus will be on the Nothing phone (due out in the summer?) but the real key to the company’s survival will be the OS, where many much larger and more financially able companies have tried and failed. That said, we reserve judgement until the OS is released and we can get a better picture as to how it might work with other devices. The phone will likely be a slick and hip new entry into a market of bland new models, but we hope that the promo’s lack of detail and unfocused objectives do not portend another iPhone clone.
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