CMF

Consumer Electronics · Smartphones · India Manufacturing

Expansion

Nothing spins off CMF as a standalone Indian company, eyes 100M phones

The bet is that India's manufacturing scale can finally produce in-house IP, not just assembly for foreign brands.

• Nothing CEO Carl Pei announced in an open letter that CMF will be spun out into a standalone, majority Indian-owned company headquartered in India, with Nothing staying on as a shareholder and partner.
• CMF is Nothing's budget sub-brand, built on Nothing's in-house Android OS, industrial design and supplier relationships for displays, chipsets and cameras; it became India's fastest-growing smartphone sub-brand in 2025.
• The new CMF entity will run its own local R&D team in India rather than just assembling devices, with Pei setting a target of 100 million phones a year as the scale needed to shape suppliers.
• The spin-off builds on a September 2025 joint venture between Nothing and Indian manufacturer Optiemus Infracom, reportedly a $100 million tie-up to make CMF products in India.
• Pei noted 99% of phones sold in India are now made locally, up from almost none a decade ago, while India absorbs over 150 million smartphones a year.
• The move targets a real gap: India assembles nearly all its phones but still imports most of the underlying chip, camera and display IP, so a locally engineered brand could pull that value chain inward.