Nothing CEO Carl Pei believes that Apple is aggressively focusing on the Indian market and that’s why Nothing needs to ramp up its plans before it is too late. In an exclusive conversation with Tech Today’s Aayush Ailawadi, Carl Pei spoke about his plans for India market and the stiff competition from global brands that come with it.
In the conversation, Pei said that Nothing is planning to take market share in India before Apple becomes “too dominant”. He states, “We see Apple coming in quite aggressively [in India]. So we can't be too slow. We gotta hurry up our plans so we have a chance of taking some market share before Apple gets too dominant.”
Apple is locally manufacturing its iPhones in the country. Recently, Apple also opened its first two physical stores in India: Apple BKC and Apple Saket.
The Nothing CEO did not reveal if the brand is planning to open a physical store in India, however, he confirmed that they are scouting for locations already. Pei revealed that the reason behind the delay in opening physical stores is because they want to bring something just, unlike other brands that are too busy copying Apple Stores.
He stated, “We're a very young company compared to Apple which is around 47 years old. We built a store, end of last year in London, but mainly to experiment on the right format. Because I believe in our industry, everybody's just copying the Apple store. They're just changing the color a little bit. We didn't want to do that. So, we're still experimenting with the right format. And once we have the right format, we can, we can expand that across the world.”
Nothing is set to launch its second smartphone, Nothing Phone (2), globally on July 11. It has been confirmed that the upcoming Nothing Phone (2) is ‘Made in India’.
Pei emphasised that India is an important strategic market for them. He told Tech Today, “The Indian market will be really important. Right now, the macroeconomics are not good globally, but still in India, we don't feel a recession. The economy is still growing, there's a lot of young population, which is very tech-savvy.”
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