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    • Carl Pei says Nothing could build its own operating system
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    Carl Pei says Nothing could build its own operating system

    Umito Posted on

    Two mobile operating systems currently account for almost 100% of the global smartphone market. Building one is difficult, and for most phone makers there are better uses of resources, especially when Android is at hand. While a potential differentiator, these companies have largely chosen to stick with Google’s mobile operating system, customized with unique skins and features.

    Huawei recently bucked the trend with the release of Harmony OS, although this is a direct product of geopolitical restrictions on the use of US products. However, despite its enormous resources, the Chinese electronics giant has found it extremely difficult to create its own alternative to Android.

    Given its tendency to disrupt the market, it’s perhaps not entirely surprising that London-based Nothing was able to create its own mobile operating system from scratch. On Wednesday at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, founder and CEO Carl Pei confirmed that the company is exploring what a true Nothing operating system might look like.

    Pei hailed smartphones as “our most important gateway to the people we care about and the information we need to consume,” while criticizing the Google/Apple duopoly in the industry.

    “We’re thinking about how we’ll maneuver here,” he added, “and maybe we’ll create something of our own.” A kind of operating system.

    The goals of such a move would be to expand Nothing’s impact on the industry, while creating an entirely new revenue stream.

    “You can now make an impact on the software side,” Pei explained. “You can change the way people use their devices. On the business side, it is also very lucrative. In a way, it kind of sucks to be a hardware company because of the supply chain, high investment, low margins, and high product market risk. In many ways, having software revenue is much more comfortable: higher margins. But I think the most important thing is still to satisfy the consumer.”

    The founder said he believes the process of creating a mobile operating system has become much easier, thanks to the recent AI boom. Such technology will also go a long way in providing a level of customization that has been lacking on existing platforms.

    “If you think about the technology stack for what an operating system is, I don’t think we need to work on the lower parts of the stack – the drivers and how hardware connects to software and to the core,” Pei added. “I don’t think we need to work on that, but we should work on user experience innovation, because operating systems haven’t really changed in 40 years. These computers, smartphones and devices hold so much information about us. We do a lot of stuff on them, but they don’t leverage any of that information to improve the experience.

    When asked if the company was looking to raise funds to build such a project, Pei declined to comment.

    “I don’t think it requires a lot of experience,” he said. It’s applied AI, it’s not fundamental. We don’t build capabilities, we don’t train large language models, we don’t build speech synthesis or anything like that. This ship has sailed and it is going to become hyper competitive. Two or three players will win big and the others will lose money.

    Pei continues: “Whether the funding comes or not, this is something we can work on. »

    AI would be an important part of such an operating system, he explained, but it is not the end-all-be-all solution.

    “We shouldn’t call it the operating system of AI,” he said. “AI is just a tool, and ultimately it’s about who can create the best product, who can create the best market fit and get the highest user satisfaction. Because without it, it just won’t work. »

    Umito
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