Nothing's budget brand CMF won't be releasing a new phone this year

Nothing's budget brand CMF will not release a new phone this year due to rising memory prices, co-founder Akis Evangelidis announced. The company cited supply shortages driven by AI demand as the reason it cannot produce a phone that feels like a genuine step forward at a reasonable price.

Nothing's budget brand CMF won't be releasing a new phone this year The company's co-founder says it's because of increasing memory prices. CMF, the budget brand owned by Nothing, will not be launching a follow-up to the Phone Pro 2 anytime soon. "A lot of you have been asking when the next CMF phone is coming and as always we'd rather be transparent," Nothing co-founder Akis Evangelidis wrote in a post on X https://x.com/AkisEvangelidis/status/2067855233968156975?s=20 . He said that CMF was working on a successor to the Phone Pro 2, but because of current memory prices, the subsidiary can't build a phone that "feels like a genuine step forward at a price that makes sense for CMF." That's why CMF decided not to launch a new phone this year. RAM prices have skyrocketed over the past year due to supply shortages, caused by manufacturers redirecting their production to fulfill orders from massive AI buildouts. Both Apple https://www.engadget.com/2196902/tim-cook-says-apple-price-increases-are-unavoidable-due-to-memory-crunch/ and Samsung https://www.engadget.com/ai/samsung-says-ram-costs-will-likely-lead-to-price-hikes-soon-170653524.html have already warned that price hikes are coming due to increasing RAM costs, while the IDC predicted https://www.engadget.com/computing/idc-warns-of-major-pc-market-downturn-due-to-memory-crunch-214510197.html that PC shipments could shrink by almost 10 percent this year due to higher prices. Nothing's CMF launched the Phone Pro 2 https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/nothing-sub-brand-cmf-just-announced-a-new-smartphone-and-earbuds-134517602.html as it latest flagship device in April last year. It was the lightest and slimmest smartphone it has ever designed so far, and the brand suggested back then that the phone can last two days on a single charge. A few months after Phone Pro 2 was launched, Nothing spun off its CMF brand into an independent subsidiary https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/nothing-is-spinning-off-its-budget-cmf-brand-152505010.html headquartered in India, which is the company's strongest market. Even though it's not going to release a new phone this year, Evangelidis says CMF will launch several new products, "as well as some entirely new categories."