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This startup is betting on earbuds -- and tech you can see through - CNET

This startup is betting on earbuds -- and tech you can see through - CNET

This startup is betting on earbuds -- and tech you can see through - CNET
Jul 20, 2021 3 mins, 4 secs

In an exclusive interview ahead of Nothing's first product launch, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei talks about his new venture and the Ear 1 earbuds.

On July 27, we'll see the first product from his venture -- the Ear 1 true wireless earbuds.

Nothing originally settled on April as the date it would launch its first product, but it had two false starts with iterations of the Ear 1 true wireless earbuds.

Not only was he joining the ranks of former tech execs who had left big companies to strike out alone in building consumer tech (including Andy Rubin's Essential and Tom Moss' Nextbit), it turned out that making a physically transparent product was harder than expected.

"What took time for us was getting the transparent design to fruition," Pei said.

Squeezing the wireless charging tech into this largely transparent shell gives us a hint at the challenge Pei set for himself when he chose to make earbuds as his first product.

The Ear 1 might have been tough to make, but choosing a set of true wireless earbuds as Nothing's first product made the best business sense for the new company, said Pei.

The wireless earbud category has the potential to showcase what will set Nothing products apart from those made by rival consumer tech companies, Pei told me.

For Pei, displaying the Ear 1 with its transparent elements next to the lineup of almost indistinguishable rival products will be the company's opportunity to prove it means what it says about differentiated design.

Although Pei cites Apple's journey from wacky rebel to market leader as one worth aspiring to, it's another mainstream tech brand -- Sony -- that's more heavily influenced Nothing's design direction.

It demonstrates that the company developed a perspective on design, something he believes is missing in a lot of consumer tech companies, many of which rely on seasonal color trends to tweak their products between different iterations.

Like Sony, Nothing's plan is to implement its design philosophy across its product lineup for the long term, allowing people to observe continuity across the range.

You should be able to see the hallmarks of Nothing design in different generations of products.

Magnets in tech are usually hidden behind plastic, but in Nothing's product casing there is nowhere for them to hide, so they needed to be perfectly polished with no blemishes.

Historically, London might not have been the best choice of location to found a tech company, Pei said.

What he sees as setting tech companies apart now is finding talent who can specialize in the creative side of doing business and can design products that resonate emotionally with people

The British capital has an abundance of people with these skills, Pei said -- even though he's lured a handful of Nothing's 80 employees (a number he hopes to boost to 200 by the end of the year) from US tech giants who happen to be working in the city along the way

It's "a great place to start a global tech company from," he said

From when the company was first announced publicly in January, the long-term strategy has always been to create an ecosystem of devices -- something Pei admits is "an overused buzzword" and for Nothing is largely "still directional thoughts." Pei isn't giving away any clues right now about what to expect from Nothing's sophomore product -- he is entirely focused on this first launch. 

"If you try and jump too far, you might end up on very loose ground and end up having the company become a failure." This has been the fate of Andy Rubin's foray into the world of consumer tech startups (in fact, Nothing acquired the intellectual property rights held by Rubin's company back in February)

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