It's bad enough that we have a global chip shortage that never seems to end but now it seems that there may be a case of industrial sabotage against Nothing. Having published a blog post complimenting his team on the performance of the company's first product, the Ears (1), Nothing's CEO went on to accuse a “major incumbent” of manipulating the supply chain in order to “attack” his company.
In his blog post, the Nothing CEO first gushed about the company's successes in its first year of operations, referencing that 320K orders had been received, 180K of which had already shipped. He also mentioned that the Ears (1) had been favorably reviewed (Hey bud, where's our unit that we were promised?) by both media and consumers. After some marketing waffle and then revealing that Nothing how has a 158-strong team and $74 million-plus funding, Carl Pei got to the meaty stuff:
“To add to the fun, we’ve also had a major incumbent attacking us in the supply chain trying to block our access to key components. We should take that as a sign of respect.”
It seems that at least part of the reason that Nothing has only shipped 180 thousand of the 320 thousand orders that it received could be down to outside interference. He doesn't say which company is to blame nor does he reveal what said company actually did to obstruct Nothing's progress. But it's obvious that he believes that a company did something to Nothing. Hopefully, we'll hear a little more about this alleged skullduggery by an outside force but in the meantime with the scarcity of facts, it could be a case of much ado about Nothing as we await further details on the company's next product which is rumored to be a smartphone.
