Carl Pei Wants CMF to Be India’s First Global Phone Brand, but There Is a Catch

Nothing CEO Carl Pei has written a letter titled "India Is Inevitable," and it comes with big news for anyone who owns or is thinking of buying a CMF phone. CMF will become a standalone Indian company, majority owned by Indian shareholders and headquartered here, with Nothing staying on as a shareholder and partner.

This has been building for a year. Nothing first announced the CMF spin-off in September 2025, along with a $100 million joint venture with Optiemus that's expected to create 1,800 jobs over three years. CMF was then registered as CMF India Private Limited. What's new now is the ownership: back then, CMF was described as an independent subsidiary of Nothing, and now Pei says Indian shareholders will hold the majority.

Pei's argument is simple. Japan, Korea and China built global phone brands on top of their manufacturing, and he believes India is next. What's missing, according to him, is real R&D, meaning a company that designs and engineers its own phones instead of picking one from a factory catalogue.

India's phone story, by the numbers

• 99.2% of phones sold in India are made here, up from just 26% in 2014-15 (PIB)
• 45% was the share Indian brands held of India's smartphone market in 2015 (Gizbot, citing Counterpoint)
• Less than 1% is what Indian brands held by early 2023 (Business Standard)
• 42% of smartphones shipped in India in Q2 2025 cost between $100 and $200, which is exactly where CMF sells (TechCrunch, citing IDC)
• 85% was Nothing's year-on-year shipment growth in India in Q2 2025, making it the country's fastest-growing brand (TechCrunch, citing IDC)

It's an exciting pitch. But if you're about to spend Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 on a phone, here's what actually matters to you.

Haven't we heard "Indian brand" before?

We have, and it didn't end well. Micromax was once so big that in mid-2014 it briefly beat Samsung in total phone sales in India. Within a few years, Indian brands had almost disappeared.

Pei himself admits why. Those brands mostly sold phones designed by Chinese manufacturers with their own logo on the back, and many buyers remember what came with that: phones that rarely got updates and service that vanished after a year. So "Indian-owned" alone is not a reason to buy anything.

What happens to your CMF phone?

This is the question most CMF owners will ask, and the brand's record so far is decent. The CMF Phone 2 Pro is promised three Android updates and six years of security patches, a big jump from the CMF Phone 1's two updates and three years of patches. And it delivered Android 16 to both CMF phones before the end of 2025, as promised.

The letter says Nothing OS and the engineering team will move to the new Indian company. What it doesn't clearly say is who will build and push those updates from now on. If you own a CMF phone, that's the promise you'll want in writing.

The catch: no new CMF phone this year

Here's the part the letter skips. Pei talks about selling 100 million phones a year, but CMF isn't launching a single new phone in 2026.

In June, Nothing co-founder Akis Evangelidis said on X that with memory prices where they are, CMF couldn't build a phone that felt like a genuine step forward at a sensible price. Some unverified reports suggest that the same CMF Phone 2 Pro, launched at Rs 18,999, would cost around Rs 30,000 to Rs 35,000 to make today.

And it's not just CMF feeling the pressure. India's phone industry body ICEA says annual phone sales in India have dropped from nearly 300 million to about 220 million units since GST on phones went up to 18% in 2020. Phones are getting harder to afford, and the memory crunch is making it worse.

Credit where it's due - most brands would have quietly raised prices instead of explaining why. But it shows that big plans on paper can't stop budget phones from getting more expensive.

So, should you care?

Yes, but for the right reasons. If CMF really builds its engineering team in India, you could see features designed for Indian users first and faster fixes when things go wrong. That's worth watching.

Until then, judge CMF the way you'd judge any other brand: on price, updates and after-sales service, not on where its office is.