OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei’s next company is literally called Nothing

Carl Pei, the OnePlus co-founder who split from the company last year, announced the name of his next company: Nothing. It describes itself as a “London-based consumer tech company” and counts iPod inventor Tony Fadell, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman and YouTuber Casey Neistat among its investors. It plans to release its first “smart devices” in the first half of this year.

“Nothing’s mission is to break down barriers between people and technology to create a seamless digital future,” says Pei, founder and CEO of Nothing, in a press release. “We believe the best technology is beautiful, yet natural and intuitive to use. When it is far enough along, it should disappear into the background and look like nothing. “

Image: Nothing

What is not clear at this time is exactly what products Nothing is planning to release. In an interview with The edge ahead of today’s announcement, Pei declined to provide specific details on what Nothing’s first “smart devices” will take. He also declined to say which companies Nothing plans to compete with.

Pei confirms, however, that Nothing plans to launch products in multiple categories, with the ultimate goal of creating an ecosystem of devices.

“Right now… the team is being built, so we want to focus on simpler categories,” says Pei, “but as our team builds capabilities and skills, we want to start moving forward. The ultimate vision of having everything connected seamlessly, this can only happen when multiple product categories are connected. “

During Pei’s tenure at OnePlus, the company released everything from smartphones to headphones and even TVs. Last year, Wired reported that Pei’s new company could focus on music and include earphone manufacturing. When asked, Pei declined to confirm whether the headphones would be part of Nothing’s first products. For request of Wired, he said the company’s plans were “much more than that.”

Although there has been speculation that this could indicate Nothing would develop an accompanying music service, Pei says The edge that Nothing plans to make the most of its money by selling hardware rather than software subscriptions, at least initially. “We didn’t spend too much time thinking about the software part,” says Pei. “It definitely has to be a good user experience if you want to generate income from software.” In the long run, however, he admits that a “healthy business” requires both good hardware and good software.

Pei’s new company plans to differentiate itself by using “tailor-made” components in its products from the start. Pei suggests that this will prevent Nothing products from looking too similar to its competition. “There’s a reason a lot of products on the market look quite the same,” observes Pei. “It’s because they share a lot of the same components and the same building blocks.”

In contrast, OnePlus phones have come under frequent criticism over the years for the similarities they share with Oppo’s phones. In a recent video, Marques Brownlee described a series of Oppo and OnePlus devices with surprisingly similar hardware, such as the OnePlus 5 and the Oppo R11, the OnePlus 6T and the Oppo R17, and the OnePlus Nord N100 and Oppo A53. . The two brands even use similar fast charging technologies. OnePlus has Dash Charge and Oppo has VOOC.

While OnePlus and Oppo would largely exist under the same Chinese giant BBK Electronics, Pei says nothing is released by such an arrangement. “[Nothing is] a completely independent company owned by our founding team and our investors, ”says Pei, with its own R&D department. And despite using contract manufacturers to build its devices, Pei says Nothing is not going to just “rename someone else’s products.”

But while Pei hopes Nothing’s early products feature “differentiated” designs without feeling “different to be different,” the eventual hope is that they will fade into the background.

“I imagine a grassy area with people having a picnic and there is no screen, there is no laptop screen, there is no phone screen, there is no smartwatch screen, there is no display screen, “Pei thought to herself. “It’s kind of the end state.”

Edge Columnist Walt Mossberg referred to this future state as ambient computing in 2017. Pei admits it can take 20 or 30 years to happen, but he says the future his company is aiming for is where its technology looks … well, nothing .