Carl Pei’s Nothing announcement paints a clear picture of modern OnePlus

Opinion from

C. Scott Brown

OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei finally announced the name of his new company today: Nothing. The nickname “In-Your-Face” brings a lot of advertising to the new company. That’s a real achievement considering we still have no idea what Nothing is going to do. Pei would only make a commitment that Nothing is a “London-based consumer technology company.”

Without a formal commitment from the brand, there’s pretty much nothing to say about Nothing. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of interesting things going on in Nothing’s press release or Pei’s discussions about the company to date. The kicker is that these statements shed more light on the company Pei recently left than on his new venture.

I want to highlight two pieces of information we learned today and theorize how they paint an unflattering picture of OnePlus as it is today.

Nothing will fail to re-label someone else’s products.

An interview with Carl Pei started on The edge along with the formal announcement of Nothing. The edge tried to extract information about Nothing from Pei, but he didn’t move. He had some cryptic information that we posted here:

“[Nothing is] A completely independent company that belongs to our founding team and our investors, ”says Pei with its own research and development department. And despite using contract manufacturers to build its equipment, Pei says Nothing won’t just re-label others’ products.

Anyone who follows the tech world closely will take that last line as an obvious confrontation with OnePlus. While the company has always borrowed heavily from Oppo and its other sister brands under the BBK banner (and later under the OPLUS banner), OnePlus’ opposition has only deteriorated over the years. In 2020, the company gave up all pretenses and launched two “new” phones – the Nord N10 and the Nord N100 – that were located near breakdowns from Oppo phones.

Connected: OnePlus’ opposition is getting worse and worse

Coincidentally, these phones started around the time Carl Pei was leaving the company. Pei’s statement too The edge strongly suggests that part of the reason he left OnePlus could have to do with this negligent attitude towards the brand’s own market identity.

“There’s a reason a lot of the products on the market look pretty similar.”

Pei continued to throw gas on the fire with another statement The edge. When explaining how nothing will be independent, he dropped this bomb:

“There’s a reason a lot of products on the market look pretty similar,” Pei notes. “It’s because they share a lot of the same components and the same building blocks.”

Once again, this seems like a barely veiled admonition from OnePlus. Since the company was founded seven years ago, there has been a thorough study of how closely it is related to other Chinese brands. It is obvious that OnePlus does not work completely independently. For example, OnePlus’s birthday was on December 16, 2013. By April 2014, the company had already designed and manufactured the OnePlus One. A brand new startup couldn’t achieve this without serious support.

See also: OnePlus Phones: A History of the Company’s Entire Product Line

While Pei’s narrow nature prevents us from coming to real conclusions, I can’t help but feel that he was likely frustrated with OnePlus’ recent moves to be less independent. When Pei co-founded OnePlus, he was only 24 years old. Perhaps based on the quotes, he felt that the company would get a little help from the brands they own and then gradually become more independent. The existence of the OnePlus Nord N10 / N100, as well as the similarities between the leaked OnePlus 9 designs and the Oppo Reno 5, suggest that this is far from the current direction of OnePlus.

Does Carl Pei just fan the flames for headlines?

I could sit here and long dissect everything Pei revealed today. Although we have to extrapolate a lot due to his incredible ability to play his cards close to his chest, one thing is absolutely certain: Carl Pei has left OnePlus and is not afraid to push anything with it.

With that in mind, it’s very likely that Pei is just playing a PR game. Perhaps he left OnePlus not out of frustration with the direction of the company, but for other reasons. Perhaps his statements today are not specific arguments with his former employer, but simple exhortations for the entire tech industry. I dont know.

Pei is a master at building hype.

I know Pei is a master at building hype. While at OnePlus, his pre-launch interviews and announcements always revealed just enough to make people salivate, but not enough to really get a grip on the product. He fully implemented this in the run-up to OnePlus Nord – a project he headed in the company. The resulting PR campaign for the mid-ranger was as extensive as it was exhausting. Obviously he’s ready to use the same skills with Nothing.

The trick he has to play now is to use his connection with OnePlus to overdo Nothing but not rely on it. Pei is smart enough to know that he can’t be “the guy who left OnePlus” forever. He has to forge a new identity if he wants nothing to stand on its own. If my theories about his departure from OnePlus are correct, then the last thing he wants is to be committed to another brand.