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

Earlier today, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei finally revealed the name of his new company: Nothing. The in-your-face moniker is gaining a lot of publicity for the new venture. This is a real achievement, as we do not yet have an idea that will create anything. Pei just wants to commit to Nothing being a “consumer technology business in London”.

Without any formal obligations of the brand, there is nothing to say about anything. However, this does not mean that there are not enough interesting things going on in the press release of Nothing and Pei’s discussions so far. The incident is that these statements shed more light on the company that Pei recently left than on his new venture.

I want to highlight two pieces of information we learned today and theorize about how it paints a flattering picture of OnePlus as it looks today.

Nothing will mark someone else’s products. ”

An interview with Carl Pei launched The edge along with the formal announcement of Nothing. The edge tried to dig up the information they could on nothing from Pei, but he did not move. He did have some cryptic information that we posted here:

‘[Nothing is] a completely independent company owned by our founding team and our investors, ‘says Pei, with its own R&D division. And despite using contract makers to build their devices, Pei says that nothing will not just rebrand someone else’s products. “

Anyone who follows the tech world closely will understand the last line as an apparent dig at OnePlus. While the company has always borrowed heavily from Oppo and its other sister brands under the BBK banner (and later also the OPLUS banner), OnePlus’ Oppo ification has only gotten worse over the years. In 2020, the company abandoned all pretenses and introduced two ‘new’ phones – the Nord N10 and Nord N100 – which were close to the carbon copies of Oppo phones.

Related: The oppo-ification of OnePlus is getting worse

Coincidentally, the phones started ringing by the time Carl Pei left the company. Pei’s statement to The edge strongly suggests that part of the reason he left OnePlus may have had to do with this slack attitude towards the brand’s own market identity.

“There is a reason why many products on the market look very similar”

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

“There is a reason why many products on the market are very similar,” Pei notes. “It’s because they share a lot of the same components and the same building blocks.”

Again, this seems to be a thinly veiled admonition from OnePlus. Since the company’s inception seven years ago, much research has been done into how connected it is to other Chinese brands. Clearly, OnePlus is not working completely independently. The birthday of OnePlus, for example, was on December 16, 2013. In April 2014, the company already designed and manufactured the OnePlus One. Clearly, a brand new startup cannot achieve this without serious help.

See also: OnePlus phones: a history of the company’s entire range so far

Although Pei’s concise nature prevents us from coming to true conclusions, I can not help but feel that he has probably become frustrated with the recent move by OnePlus to be less independent. When Pei was co-founder of OnePlus, he was just 24 years old. Based on the offers, it may be that he was of the opinion that the company would start by getting a little help from its associated brands 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 – indicate that it is far from OnePlus’ current direction.

Does Carl Pei just blow the flames for headlines?

I could sit here for a long time and analyze what Pei revealed today. While we have to extrapolate a lot because of his incredible ability to play his cards near the chest, one thing is for sure: Carl Pei has left OnePlus and is not ashamed to use it to print anything.

With that in mind, it’s quite possible that Pei is just playing a PR game. Maybe he did not leave OnePlus out of frustration over the direction of the company, but for other reasons. Perhaps his statements today are not specific to his former employer, but only to general technology. I do not know.

Pei is a master at building hype.

I do know that Pei is a master at building hype. While at OnePlus, his interviews and announcements before the launch always revealed just enough to make people drool, but not enough to really grab the product. This was something he fully put into practice during the construction of the OnePlus Nord – a project he led when he was with the company. The resulting PR campaign for the midfielder was as extensive as it was exhausting. Clearly, he is ready to use the same skills with nothing.

The trick he has to play now is to use his connection to OnePlus to hype nothing but not become dependent on it. Pei is smart enough to know that he can not be ‘the guy who left OnePlus’. He must forge a new identity if he wants nothing to stand on its own. After all, if my theories about his departure from OnePlus are correct, then the last thing he would want is to look at another brand.