Nothing, a consumer electronics company, will spin off CMF into a standalone, India-headquartered company, its cofounder and chief executive officer (CEO) Carl Pei said in a social media post on Monday.
The new entity will also be majority owned by Indian shareholders and have its own team and research and development (R&D) operations in the country. And, Nothing will retain a stake in the company and remain a partner. “CMF stops being a product line inside a London company and becomes a company of its own, incorporated in India, controlled in India, majority owned by Indian shareholders,” Pei said.
CMF was launched by Nothing as a more affordable consumer technology brand. Pei said CMF was built on the engineering and product development capabilities developed by Nothing, and it became India’s fastest-growing smartphone sub-brand in 2025.
Pei said CMF’s longer-term ambition is to build a business capable of shipping 100 million phones annually, mentioning that this scale would allow the company to influence the electronics supply chain. “A 100 million a year is the line between a brand and a platform. Below it, you’re a customer of the supply chain. Above it, you’re the reason it exists,” he said.
According to the CEO, the move comes as India emerges as the world’s second-largest smartphone manufacturing hub. The company is looking to build a consumer electronics brand that develops products and intellectual property in the country (India) rather than manufacturing products designed elsewhere.
Pei said the new company will bring in Nothing’s engineering capabilities, operating system, supplier relationships, and global brand-building experience, while India will contribute its manufacturing base, talent pool, and domestic market. “Being a partner means the company is Indian: owned in India, run from India, engineered in India,” he said.
India has significantly expanded its electronics manufacturing capabilities over the past decade, particularly in smartphones. According to government and industry data cited by Pei, around 99 per cent of smartphones sold in India are now manufactured domestically, compared with almost none a decade ago.
Pei, however, said the next phase for India’s electronics industry would need to move beyond assembly and manufacturing towards product engineering and R&D. “But manufacturing is step one. Step two is R&D: the capability that sets harder problems for suppliers and pulls a full value chain into the country,” he said.
India has a domestic market that absorbs more than 150 million smartphones annually and is increasingly being positioned as an export base for electronics. Pei said the country now has the manufacturing infrastructure and talent required to support the next stage of the industry, but lacks a major home-grown consumer electronics brand around which a broader engineering ecosystem can develop.
“India has a manufacturing base, a market absorbing over 150 million smartphones a year, and a government determined to make the country a global export hub. What it lacks is the brand to drive the engineering demand,” he said.
