Pei Yu, founder of Nothing： There is no need to invent new hardware in the AI era
Phoenix Network Technology News On May 23, during BEYOND International Science and Technology Innovation Expo, Phoenix Network Technology had a dialogue with PEI Yu, the founder of Nothing. In an exclusive interview, Pei Yu said that there may be a new technological revolution, and this corporate culture of Apple may not be able to catch up. For example, their car failed and AI was actually very slow.
It is reported that in April this year, Nothing launched AI hardware products. After logging in to ChatGPT, Nothing headphones and mobile phones can directly communicate with ChatGPT with headphones. Pei Yu said that we cooperated with ChatGPT because ChatGPT has 100 million users and our scale is relatively small, so we can try to cooperate together.
In addition, Pei Yu thinks Cook is a very good operator. Jobs designed products in different sizes and price segments, and then sold them more and more. He said, "Apple’s style is self-research. It will only cooperate with others if it is really bad. Now they have reached the stage where it is really bad in AI."
Summary of dialogue points:
1. What are the core innovations and competitive advantages of Nothing products? What are its unique features compared with other smart phones on the market?
2. At present, Nothing has launched mobile phones and headphones. What are the next plans in hardware or software? Will you consider the layout of AI hardware products?
3. How does Pei Yu evaluate Cook and Apple?
4. Under the background of serious homogenization of electronic products, how to treat the innovation of consumer electronic products?
The following is a record of the dialogue between PEI Yu, the founder of Nothing, and the media (some conversations were deleted):
Media:What are the core innovations and competitive advantages of Nothing products? Compared with other smart phones on the market, what are the unique features of large-scale products?
Pei Yu: I don’t think we have core innovation, because our category is very mature, and there are many different technologies in the market. We integrate everyone’s technologies, package them with characteristics and sell them to consumers. In fact, most companies have no core technology. However, as the only startup in the industry, we have a lot of freedom to explore different things, such as making differences in industrial design. Now the software interaction design is very different from the native Android, so we have obtained a number of high-quality users through design.
Media:For the mobile phone and headset products that have been launched, what are the next plans in hardware and software, and will you consider laying out AI hardware products?
Pei Yu:I think the most interesting thing at present is AI, because every time there is a new technological revolution, the industry will shuffle. When I was a child, I thought Nokia and Blackberry were invincible, but with the arrival of mobile Internet and mobile terminals, their share decreased. As a new company, we have our own advantages and disadvantages, but our industrial design team should be one of the best in the world.
Now that Apple has focused on other things, it is another business model, so I think we have many disadvantages in this era. However, our design speed is definitely faster than that of big companies. I have also learned a lot of internal information of Apple recently, and they are very entangled in AI.
Based on my understanding, there will be no particularly interesting AI products at the developer conference on June 10th, so this is our opportunity. We made a preliminary AI attempt with overseas Perplexity in March. All consumers who buy Nothing in the first week have free Perplexity.
In April this year, we launched a product related to ChatGPT. If we connect our headphones and mobile phones, we can communicate with ChatGPT directly in the headphones. Moreover, all people who have bought Nothing headphones have this function. As for why we should cooperate with Chatgpt, I think Chatgpt has 100 million users, and our scale is relatively small, so we can try to cooperate together. We will also have our own layout, which can run faster than these big companies.
But in the AI era, I personally don’t agree that it is too early to invent a new hardware, including the AI hardware made by other startups. We already have the best equipment. Every year, the global sales of mobile phones are 1 billion sets and headphones are 300 million sets. Why don’t we give full play to these first? Moreover, we only have two pockets, and it is impossible to put other equipment in the pockets.
Media: You just said that Vision Pro has no fire. What do you think of this matter?
Pei Yu:I think Cook is a very good operator. Jobs designed products in different sizes and price segments, and then sold them more and more. But I think there is a new technological revolution, and this corporate culture may not be able to catch up. For example, if their car fails, why is it half a failure? Because their AI is actually very slow, I think they may have problems. Apple’s style is self-research. It will only cooperate with others if it is really bad. Now they have reached the stage where it is really bad in AI.
Media: Apple’s share price has been very high and stable, and a large part of the reason is that they are always being innovators, being the first and the strongest. What do you think of this?
Pei Yu:I’ve been thinking about a concept called innovator’s dilemma. As an innovative company, it gains market share, users and stock price through innovation, but when it is large, it is actually difficult to innovate. Why? Because you have too many users, you have very young users and very old users, so pushing something may make many users dislike it. And tied by the stock price, as CEO, don’t you want to see the stock price fluctuate? Therefore, it is often not very innovative. This is a book called "Innovator’s Dillemma", which specializes in analyzing historical big companies. The company was very innovative in the past. Why can’t it be innovative when it becomes bigger? Now I’ve been thinking about this problem.
Media: What do you think of the innovation of consumer electronic products under the background of serious homogenization of electronic products? What unique stories and ideas can we share with our users in the design and manufacturing process of Nothing products?
Pei Yu:I think if we make hardware, we really need to slow down the innovation, because it is easy to ruin ourselves, so we really need to think clearly about the rhythm. For example, when we started our business, we knew that we didn’t have any core technologies, and it was impossible to have core technologies quickly. The fastest way to differentiate ourselves was through design, so we took the time and efforts to do a good job in hardware design and software design. Up to today, we are only a consumer electronics company with partial design.
Author/Huang Ruoxi, Zhang Xueyong
Editor/Liu Yukun, Yang Ruiqi