Consumer electronics company Nothing has officially announced the spin-off of its CMF brand into a standalone, India-headquartered entity, with CEO Carl Pei confirming the plan in an open letter posted to X on 21 September 2026. As reported by GizmoChina, the new company will be majority owned by Indian shareholders and will have its own team and research and development operations in India. Nothing will retain a stake in the company and remain a partner, with Pei stating that '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'. The announcement does not disclose the ownership split or name the Indian shareholders, nor does it provide a specific date for the legal change. Pei emphasized that 'Being a partner means the company is Indian: owned in India, run from India, engineered in India'. The plan is closely tied to Nothing's broader strategy, with Pei now stating that 'There will no longer be any shareholders or partners. It will be a new company with its own engineering and R&D team in India'.
The board of Optiemus Infracom has approved the expansion of its existing partnership with London-based Nothing Electronics by entering into a binding term sheet to establish a Joint Venture (JV) Company for the commercialization and sale of CMF products, as reported by Business Standard. The JV will focus on mobile phones and their sub-assemblies/components, subject to fulfillment of conditions precedent and definitive agreements. Subject to the fulfilment of conditions precedent and receipt of necessary approvals, the Company will initially acquire 51.1% of the equity share capital of the proposed JV Company. This expansion builds on the Indian government's sustained efforts to strengthen the country's electronics manufacturing and technology ecosystem, with the JV taking forward the strategic manufacturing joint venture that Nothing and Optiemus announced in September 2025. The expanded arrangement brings together manufacturing, ownership and research and development (R&D) capabilities, with Optiemus providing manufacturing capabilities and local expertise while Nothing brings its product design, software and engineering experience to CMF. The move comes after years of investment in smartphone manufacturing in the country, with the partnership combining three elements to establish CMF as an independent, majority Indian-owned smartphone company.
The spin-off will give CMF India responsibility for more of the work behind its products, including industrial design, materials, thermal management, durability, camera hardware and software, operating-system updates, antenna certification and supplier relationships, as reported by India Today. Pei's target is 100 million phones a year, a volume he says would give CMF enough influence to push suppliers beyond off-the-shelf components. This represents an ambition rather than a production forecast, with the company continuing to focus on IoT products this year while smartphone plans would be reassessed once market conditions improve. The brand will take Nothing OS, engineering resources, supplier relationships and the wider brand operation with it, moving beyond assembly towards product engineering and R&D capabilities. According to Moneycontrol, the company already possesses several key capabilities required for this strategy, including its in-house Nothing OS software platform, camera processing and features, industrial design capabilities, and direct relationships with suppliers for components such as displays, chipsets and camera modules. CMF was built on this foundation and became India's fastest-growing smartphone sub-brand in 2025. Nothing argues that 'full-stack R&D' goes beyond having a local design team, identifying six areas of focus: industrial design, mechanical engineering, camera engineering and imaging, software engineering, connectivity including antennas and radio systems, and component engineering involving direct work with suppliers to improve parts. The company's stated expectation is that this could create a demand-driven ecosystem in India, with CMF's proposed capabilities covering industrial design, mechanical engineering, camera engineering, software engineering, connectivity engineering and component engineering.
CMF was launched by Nothing as a more affordable consumer technology brand and became India's fastest-growing smartphone sub-brand in 2025, according to the CEO's announcement. The brand was built on the engineering and product development capabilities developed by Nothing, leveraging the company's existing infrastructure and expertise. According to Counterpoint Research, Nothing was India's fastest-growing smartphone brand in June 2026 quarter at 105% YoY, driven by strong demand for the Phone (4a) and Phone (4a) Pro models, and enhanced brand visibility provided by its title sponsorship of the RCB cricket team during the Indian Premier League (IPL). Pei emphasized that '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' as CMF's longer-term ambition. The latest announcement comes as CMF is not launching a new smartphone in 2026, with co-founder Akis Evangelidis confirming earlier this year that the company had been working on a successor to the CMF Phone 2 Pro but decided not to launch it due to rising memory prices making it difficult to deliver a meaningful upgrade at a price that made sense for CMF. The company's stated model does not mean every component will necessarily be manufactured domestically, instead focusing on designing, optimizing and working directly with suppliers on products and components.
The strategic move comes as India emerges as the world's second-largest smartphone manufacturing hub, with around 99% of smartphones sold in India now manufactured domestically compared to almost none a decade ago, as reported by Business Standard. 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 noted that while India has the manufacturing infrastructure and talent required to support the next stage of the industry, it currently lacks a major home-grown consumer electronics brand around which a broader engineering ecosystem can develop. In his latest announcement, Pei highlighted that 'India is already well placed to build its own global consumer electronics brands, having developed a large manufacturing base, a huge smartphone market and a deep pool of software talent'. He emphasized that 'What it lacks is the brand to drive the engineering demand' and that 'India has the manufacturing base, a market absorbing over 150 million smartphones a year, and a government determined to make the country a global export hub'. Pei drew on historical context, noting that 'Indian brands sold close to half of all smartphones in the country in 2015, with one domestic brand briefly becoming India's best-selling smartphone brand ahead of Samsung. But, he said, the advantage did not last. Within two years, foreign brands arrived with what the domestic ones lacked: real engineering'. Pei believes that 'manufacturing alone cannot create sustainable global electronics brands' and argues that companies need to control critical parts of product development, from industrial design and camera systems to software, thermal engineering, antennas and component development. He described this capability as 'real R&D' and said it is what can allow companies to differentiate themselves beyond competing purely on price. The government has recently notified the ₹62,500-crore Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme (MPMS) specifically aimed at increasing domestic value addition and strengthening supply-chain resilience, while supporting Indian brands in building technological capabilities and creating patents in design and R&D. For the smartphone industry, this represents a shift from simply increasing the number of phones made in India to increasing how much of the technology and value behind those phones is developed within the country.
CMF's majority Indian ownership could strengthen its positioning as an Indian brand, but customer demand remains focused on value rather than national origin, according to IDC's Navkendar Singh. 'The customer doesn't care if it's an Indian brand or a Chinese brand,' Singh said, emphasizing that 'Customer care, when it comes to wallet and spending, they care about the value they get'. This means CMF will still have to compete on its products in the sub-₹20,000 to ₹25,000 segment where it is likely to compete, with established players such as Vivo, Realme and Xiaomi, as well as newer entrants including Mivi and Bolt. Singh noted that 'Made in India is good, but it's largely, realistically, assembled in India', citing displays, memory and processors as examples of high-value components that continue to come from outside India. India remains dependent on China and other countries for several high-value smartphone components, with Singh stating that 'India has made progress in electronics manufacturing but remains dependent on China and other countries for several high-value smartphone components'. The CMF-Optiemus partnership is therefore about two related but distinct ambitions: for CMF, building a standalone Indian business with greater control over manufacturing, ownership and product development, while for India, creating a model for how manufacturing can gradually lead to deeper technology development. The immediate impact should not be overstated, with the bigger takeaway being India's continuing attempt to move from making smartphones in the country to developing more of what goes into them.
