If there’s one thing that Nothing’s first phone excelled at, it was bringing a bit of excitement to the understated world of smartphones. Shipments have stagnated, slowed, and contracted for the past few years, and are now at some of their lowest numbers in roughly a decade.
The phone (1) wasn’t a revolution, but it was certainly a breath of fresh air, after dealing with incremental updates from the same major players. However, potential US consumers were out of luck, at least until the London-based company opened things up a bit via a recent beta program.
Wider availability for the device may never come here in the United States, but its sequel has the world’s No. 3 market firmly in its sights. The carrier-controlled US market has been notoriously difficult to penetrate, but it is important, if only because of its sheer size. In a recent interviewfounder Carl Pei noted that the country will be a primary target for Nothing Phone (2) when it launches towards the end of the year.
The company has little else to reveal about the upcoming phone at this point, but the executive noted that Nothing’s earbuds served as a sort of test balloon for possible expansion in the United States.
“We are very excited about the US market because it is a big country,” he explained. “If you look at our headset sales, about a third of that comes from the US and by not launching our phone in the US, we’re potentially leaving a third of the volume on the table.”
Nada confirmed that it’s planning a non-beta US release for its next phone. “The United States is a major priority for 2023,” Pei told TechCrunch. “We have assembled a team that I am confident can deliver a fast and smooth operating system experience that is currently lacking in today’s smartphone industry. With the launch of our next flagship device later this year, I anticipate that Nothing will not only fill in the gaps of what is missing, but offer consumers real choice in a sea of equality.”
The larger question is whether the pause in the market will serve as a net positive or negative for Nothing’s ambitions. The slowdown may have created vacancies in a saturated category for a long time, but it remains to be seen if the slowdown is temporary, or the beginning, or if consumers are no longer buying phones at their old rate. Economic factors come and go, but even before the current climate, things looked sluggish for smartphone makers.
Hoping to continue the conversation later this month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
