Nothing CEO Carl Pei just dropped a big letter called 'India Is Inevitable,' and it's got serious implications for anyone rocking a CMF phone. Here's the headline: CMF is spinning off as a standalone Indian company with Indian shareholders holding the majority stake. Nothing stays on as a shareholder and partner, but the control is shifting. This move has been brewing for over a year, with Nothing first announcing the spinoff back in September 2025 alongside a 100 million dollar joint venture with Optiemus that's supposed to create 1,800 jobs.
Pei's pitch is actually pretty compelling on the surface. Japan, Korea, and China all built global phone giants on manufacturing strength, and he reckons India's next in line. The missing piece, according to him, is real research and development, not just slapping an Indian logo on phones sourced from factories. The numbers back up some of his optimism: 99.2% of phones sold in India are now manufactured here, and Nothing itself saw 85% year-on-year growth in Q2 2025, making it India's fastest-growing brand.
But here's where things get messy. Indian brands have promised this before. Micromax was absolutely crushing it in 2014, briefly outselling Samsung in total sales. Within years, Indian brands almost vanished entirely. Why? They were mostly selling phones designed in China with an Indian sticker slapped on the back, and buyers got burned with patchy updates and service that disappeared after a year. So 'Indian-owned' on its own isn't exactly a reason to trust anyone.
What will actually matter to you as a CMF owner is software support and updates. CMF has delivered decent results so far: the Phone 2 Pro promises three Android updates and six years of security patches, a huge jump from the original Phone 1. Both phones got Android 16 before the end of 2025 as promised. But here's what Pei's letter doesn't clearly spell out: who's actually building and pushing those updates going forward? That's the promise you'll want in writing.
Here's the real catch nobody's talking about: CMF isn't launching a single new phone in 2026. Zero. Pei's talking about selling 100 million phones a year, but the brand's pausing. Memory prices are brutal right now. Nothing co-founder Akis Evangelidis basically said on X that CMF couldn't build a meaningful upgrade at a sensible price with current costs. Some reports suggest the CMF Phone 2 Pro, which launched at Rs 18,999, would cost Rs 30,000 to Rs 35,000 to manufacture today. India's entire phone market is feeling the squeeze too: annual sales dropped from nearly 300 million units to about 220 million since GST on phones jumped to 18% in 2020.
So should you care about this spinoff? Yes, but keep your eyes open. If CMF genuinely invests in R&D and builds its own phones instead of rehashing existing designs, this could genuinely matter for Indian phone innovation. But big plans on paper don't automatically stop budget phones from getting more expensive.
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