\n<\/p>\n
Hardware startup Nothing said Thursday that it plans to make its affordable device brand, CMF, into an independent subsidiary with India serving as its headquarters for manufacturing and R&D.<\/p>\n
The company first launched CMF in 2023 with a pair of earbuds and a smartwatch. Since then, it has introduced smartphones under the brand as well.<\/p>\n
Nothing said that it is partnering with Indian ODM (Original Design Manufacturer) Optiemus to create a joint venture for manufacturing. While the startup didn\u2019t reveal the ownership structure of this venture, it said that it aims to invest more than $100 million over the next three years, while creating over 1,800 jobs.<\/p>\n
The London-based startup, following its $200 million funding round led by Tiger Global, didn\u2019t say how much money from this round will go into setting up this new venture.<\/p>\n
Nothing\u2019s decision to choose India as CMF\u2019s operational headquarters makes sense for a few reasons. CMF\u2019s smartphones have been priced under $200, and that is the dominant category in India, with over 42% of phones shipped in Q2 2025 being in the $100-$200 price range, according to IDC.<\/p>\n
India has also been Nothing\u2019s strongest market with over 2% market share in smartphones. IDC told TechCrunch via email that Nothing was the fastest-growing brand in the country in Q2 2025, with 85% growth in shipments year over year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndia will play a key role in shaping the future of the global smartphone industry.\u00a0CMF\u00a0has been well-received by the market since we launched it two years ago. With our end-to-end capabilities, we are uniquely positioned to now build it into India\u2019s first truly global smartphone brand. Our joint venture with Optiemus is a key milestone toward making that vision a reality,\u201d Nothing\u2019s CEO Carl Pei said in a statement. <\/p>\n
Techcrunch event<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> The company\u2019s move comes after it poached Himanshu Tondon from Xiaomi\u2019s spin-off brand POCO last month to be VP of Business for CMF. <\/p>\n Brand spin-offs have been increasingly common in the last decade, especially for brands based in China. Examples include Xiaomi spinning off POCO, Huawei selling off Honor, and Oppo making Realme a separate company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hardware startup Nothing said Thursday that it plans to make its affordable device brand, CMF, into an independent subsidiary with India serving as its headquarters for manufacturing and R&D. The company first launched CMF in 2023 with a pair of earbuds and a smartwatch. Since then, it has introduced smartphones under the brand as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[14196,243,14431,1462,2506,7135],"class_list":{"0":"post-23666","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-affordable","9":"tag-brand","10":"tag-cmf","11":"tag-maker","12":"tag-smartphone","13":"tag-spin"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n