CMF, Nothing’s economic subbrand, will not launch a new smartphone in 2026 due to the price of memories

CMF, the budget sub-brand of Nothing, will not launch a new smartphone model this year due to the high price that memories have reached in the market, but he assures that he has planned the launch of other products and the arrival of new categories.

The technology industry is currently living a memory shortage crisis due to the needs of artificial intelligence which are causing data centers to monopolize the production of these components to the detriment of the consumer sector.

The result is an increase in prices that not all brands can afford. As Nothing’s executive director, Carl Pei, recently shared, memory has become “the most expensive component in a smartphone“, which can represent “more than 50% of the total hardware cost.”

This situation leads consumer companies to decide whether to launch a new product at a more expensive price or if they try to contain the final price in exchange for remove features and reduce specifications. The co-founder of CMF, Akis Evangelidis, however, has chosen another route: not launching a new smartphone.

“We were working on a successor [de CMF Phone 2 Pro]but with memory prices where they are right now, we can’t build a phone that feels like a genuine breakthrough at a price that makes sense for CMF“, he explained in a statement shared on the social network X (formerly Twitter).

This means that CMF will not launch any new smartphones in 2026. Despite this announcement, CMF’s catalog for this year will not suffer, as the company plans to launch new products and even delve into “some completely new categories.

CMF appeared as a sub-brand of Nothing in summer 2023, with a more economical and casual proposal of consumer technology, which includes smartphones, wireless headphones (headband and bud type), watches and chargers.

In September of last year it became a independent subsidiary from India-based Nothing, which works with Nothing through the manufacturing joint venture with Optiemus.