According to a new report out today, a UK-based tech company is planning to launch a new phone in the US in order to compete with Apple's phone.
Nothing CEO Carl Pei said in an interview with CNBC that the startup is in early conversations with American cellular carriers about launching a new phone in the US, but he did not name any of the carriers.
The Phone 1 was launched in over 40 markets, including the UK, Japan, India, and mainland Europe. The company had no plans for a widespread release of the phone in the US.
"The reason why we didn't launch in the US is because you need a lot of additional technical support, to support all the carriers and their unique customizations that they need to make on top of Android," Pei explained in an interview with CNBC. "We felt that we weren't ready before."
"Now we are in discussions with some carriers in the US to potentially launch a future product there," said the Chinese-Swedish entrepreneur.
It will be difficult for Pei's company to compete with Apple on its own turf. There's a challenge with the mobile device operating system. He said that he was concerned about the lock-in with Airdrop among Gen Z.
There might be a time when Apple is like 80% of the market and that just doesn't leave enough space for manufacturers to keep playing.
Nothing has sold over 1 million products to date, with 600,000 earbuds and 500,000 phones being shipped.
According to figures shared with CNBC, the company expects its revenues to more than triple in 2022. Pei says that the foreign currency exchange is a factor in the firm's losses.
"We pay a lot of our COGS in US dollars, but we make money in pounds, in euros, in Indian rupee, so everything devalues against the US dollar," said Pei. The goal is to make money in the future.
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