Two mobile operating systems currently comprise nearly 100% of the global smartphone market. Building one is hard, and for most phone makers, there are better uses of resources, especially when Android is right there for the taking. While it’s a potential differentiator, these companies have largely opted to maintain Google’s mobile OS, customized by skins and unique features.
Huawei recently bucked the trend with the release of Harmony OS, though that was a direct product of geopolitical restrictions on using American products. Despite its massive resources, however, the Chinese electronics giant struggled tremendously as it scrambled to build its own Android alternative.
Given its penchant for shaking up the market, perhaps it’s not wholly surprising that London-based Nothing could build its own mobile OS from the ground up. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Wednesday, founder and CEO Carl Pei confirmed that the company is exploring what a true Nothing OS could look like.
Pei praised smartphones as “our most important gateway to the people we care about and the information we need to consume,” while criticizing the industry’s Google/Apple duopoly.
“We’re thinking about how we maneuver here,” he added, “and maybe create something of our own. Some kind of operating system.”
The goals of such a move would be to extend Nothing’s impact on the industry, while creating an entirely new revenue stream.
“Now you can make impact on the software side,” Pei explained. “You can change how people use their devices. On the business side, it’s also very lucrative. In some ways, it kind of sucks to be a hardware company, because the supply chain, high capex, low margins, and high risk for product market fit. In a lot of ways, having some software revenue is a lot more comfortable: higher margins. But I think the most important thing is still to satisfy the consumer.”
The founder said he thinks the process of building a mobile OS has become significantly easier, thanks to the recent AI boom. Such technology will also go a long way toward offering a level of customization that has been lacking on existing platforms.
“If you think about the tech stack for what an OS is, I don’t think we need to work on the lower parts of the stack — drivers and how hardware connects to software and the kernel,” Pei added. “I don’t think we need to work on that, but we should work on innovating the user experience, because operating systems haven’t really changed for 40 years. These computers, smartphones, and these devices have so much information on us. We do so much on them, but they don’t leverage any of that information to make the experience any better.”
Asked whether the company was looking to raise in order to build out such a project, Pei declined to comment.
“I don’t think it needs to be very experienced,” he said. “This is applied AI, this is not foundational. We’re not building capabilities; we’re not training large language models; we’re not building text to speech or any of that. That ship has sailed, and it’s going to get hyper competitive. Two or three players are going to win big and the rest are going to lose money.”
Pei continued: “Irrespective of [whether] funding comes or not, it’s something we can work on.”
AI would be an important piece of such an operating system, he explained, but not the be-all and end-all.
“We shouldn’t call it the AI operating system,” he said. “AI is just a tool, and ultimately it comes down to who can make the best product, who can create the best market fit, get the highest user satisfaction. Because in the absence of that, it’s just not going to work.”