Carl Pei, once the co-founder of OnePlus, recently left the bullish phone startup to start his own company called Nothing Technologies, which has now just reportedly purchased the Essential.
For those unfamiliar, Essential is the very short-lived phone brand that was created by Andy Rubin, but now the company belongs to Carl Pei. This is a slight indicator that Nothing may have the intention of releasing a smartphone at some point in the future.
Though Pei seems to have been clear that the company’s direction initially will be with smart home devices and wireless earbuds. Perhaps some various other tech devices. But, since Essential was entirely a smartphone brand, mostly due to the fact that it was only around long enough to release one product, a phone very well could be in Nothing’s future.
There is nothing essential about Nothing’s Essential acquisition
This may change in the future. But right now, there is nothing essential about Nothing’s Essential acquisition.
That’ assuming that Pei and company don’t decide to do anything with everything they acquired from the get-go. For the time being, the company purchase includes branding, logos, and trademarks. But may or may not include company staff, patents, and anything else that Essential may have owned.
And with no official announcements from Carl Pei or Nothing Technologies about what the acquisition means, this may as well be nothing more than a move made for potential future company product expansion.
Still, it might be exciting to think about what Nothing plans to come up with using the Essential name. If it has plans to create any products under that branding in the first place.
Ownership was transferred in January
While this is still a slightly new development the acquisition itself is not necessarily new. Not entirely. Ownership was transferred from Rubin to Pei in the beginning of January.
Which means Pei has been the sole owner of Essential’s branding for around a month now. Pei also still hasn’t announced anything with the branding yet. And it’s not clear when or if anything will be done with them anytime soon.
Pei is expected to announce something in regards to his company Nothing sometime this month. Which could include details about his plans for the Essential branding. Or it could just completely focus on whatever Nothing had in the works before the acquisition.
Either way, there is essentially nothing to see here for the moment.