LONDON, March 5 (Reuters) - Nothing, the smartphone maker founded in London by Carl Pei, launched new mid-tier handsets and headphones on Thursday, adding new colours to its white, black and grey palette to appeal to digitally adept younger customers.
Pei, a Swedish national who previously co-founded Chinese brand OnePlus, started Nothing in 2020 with the aim of making consumer technology less monotonous. He said smartphones had become "kind of boring", with only incremental improvements in batteries, screens and cameras.
The Phone (4a), available in pink and blue as well as black and white, and Phone (4a) Pro, available in pink, black and silver, will retail at 349 pounds or 349 euros, and 499 pounds or 479 euros, respectively.
Both phones feature improved cameras and the company's signature glyph interface, a system of LED lights on the back.
Headphone (a) has up to five days of battery life and integrated physical controls in the ear cups, the company said. It will be available in pink, yellow, black and white, priced at 149 pounds, $199 and 159 euros.
"We're giving our portfolio a splash of colour and secondly we're advancing some of our AI initiatives," Pei said.
"We started Nothing to break that monotony and make tech more fun," he said in an interview.
Nothing's first phone in 2022 stood out in a sea of similar Android devices with its transparent design and distinctive backlit glyph features.
Pei said the company was building scale and capability so it could launch more novel AI-focused products.
"We cannot just create audio products and smartphones because those are basically already solved problems," he said.
"I think we need to usher in a new wave of human-computer interaction. That will be the next step for us."
The company, which raised $200 million at a $1.3 billion valuation last year, plans to spin off its India-focused, budget-oriented devices brand called CMF.
Pei said Nothing was considering listing that business, but had not made a firm decision."India has one of the most active capital markets in the world," he said.
He said Nothing itself would be IPO-ready by the end of 2028, though the target was "more like an internal call to arms to just get our act together, build all the structures we need".
"Whether we pull the trigger or not really depends on the market conditions and our plans at that time," he said.
(Reporting by Paul Sandle. Editing by Mark Potter)
