If Nothing doesn't want to follow OnePlus, it needs to fix this one big problem

It's not a great time to be a phone maker. We're still reeling from news that OnePlus will no longer sell phones in the US, and I've seen other brands like Realme, Asus and Vivo wind down their Western aspirations recently.

Could Nothing be next? It's weathered its identity crises in the past, but recent reports suggest that the worst has yet to come. Apparently, the brand is set to exit several major markets, including some European ones, very soon.

The memory crisis, which is making your Android upgrade cost $100 more, is to blame for this changing landscape.

I've covered Nothing phones since they first came to the scene in 2022, and I think another big problem is to blame.

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By  Andy Boxall

Wait, what's happening to Nothing?

Is the phone maker going or staying?

According to the aforementioned report, sales of the recent Nothing Phone (4b) were particularly low, following less-than-stellar figures for the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro and sibling earlier in the year.

The brand is apparently pulling out of several less-profitable regions.

Nothing has denied these rumors, stating that no market exit is in place, though it confirmed company layoffs are taking place. This denial would have sounded more convincing had OnePlus not said the same thing.

Exit or not, 2026 was set to be a quiet year for the brand. At the beginning of the year, Nothing confirmed that no Nothing Phone 3 successor would be coming until 2027, showing that the brand won't have a flagship phone for some time.

More recently, we learned that CMF wouldn't be releasing a flagship phone in 2026 either. This is Nothing's budget line. Apparently, the brand had decided against a cheap or a premium phone.

All that was left was what had already hit the market: the Nothing Phone (4a), Nothing Phone (4a) Pro, and, a few months later, the Nothing Phone (4b). There's no word on if anything else will come ... other than this market exit rumor.

Releasing good phones isn't enough

Nothing releases some of the best budget mobiles

Nothing's woes don't come down to a hardware problem. I've tested some of its phones and peered through glass at others. These are great-value, affordable Android phones.

For their prices, the Nothing phones offer loads of power and robust builds. They're one of the few low-cost phones to offer zoom cameras, so I've often recommended them higher than Samsung Galaxy A or Google Pixel A phones for photographers on a budget.

Some may find their robotic looks a little divisive. But the brand has been refining the aesthetic for several years, and in the Phone (4a) Pro, it's done a good job at keeping things simple.

If people aren't buying Nothing phones, it's not because the hardware itself is to blame.

A confusing naming scheme for Nothing phones

How do people know which phones to buy?

One of my smartphone pet peeves is a confusing naming scheme. This often doesn't affect tech fans, who know what an (a) or FE or (e) means, but the average gadget buyer can easily get lost.

This is the audience that phone companies need to win over if they want to make serious sales. The buyers who flock to each new iPhone or Galaxy model each year, but aren't so committed that they wouldn't consider an alternative.

Something like the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy S scheme is great. Every year, the number goes higher. That's simple, and it's how most flagships work. You're never going to wonder if the S20 or S26 is better.

But for affordable mobiles — like Nothing's non-flagship roster — it's another story. If I were an average tech buyer, I'd be confused about which of the brand's devices to buy.

Take the Nothing Phone (4a). Numerically, it's higher than the Nothing Phone (3), and the average tech buyer won't intuitively know that the (a) suffix denotes a lower-end release.

Another example is the Nothing Phone (4b). As tech fans, we know that the (4b) sits below the (4a), but a shopper on Amazon would understandably think that (4b) is a newer model of the (4a), and would therefore be better.

When I started hearing the rumors and teases about the Nothing Phone (4b), that's what I assumed it'd be. It was only when I started to cover the specs that it became clear that this wasn't a real rival to the (4a).

You could argue that the different prices of these smartphones would be an indication that they're aimed at different market positions, and that'd be true ... if buyers could see plain prices.

However, when you're shopping for a mobile, you're often shown discounts, contracted prices, bundles. It's rare to be able to ascertain the upfront cost of a device to compare it with another.

This is the problem with letter suffixes: Every brand has a different convention. What's wrong with the "Lite" models we used to see? That makes things simple. You see the word, and you know it's a budget option.

Nothing's lettered range is confusing for buyers. The brand isn't the only culprit of impenetrable naming, but it's something the big players on the market are slowly learning. Nothing needs to follow suit if it wants to win over average shoppers.

You know another company which had a muddled naming convention? OnePlus, with its Nord devices. And we all know how that panned out.

Clean up the name, clear up the confusion

Fixing its naming scheme wouldn't solve Nothing's problems overnight. There are bigger market problems (cough, memory crisis, cough) that are the real problem.

But with the increasing cost of tech, companies like Nothing need to do as much as possible to make their phones appealing and accessible to everyday buyers. A confusing name lineup is likely to put potential new fans off.

The eventual release of the Nothing Phone (4) will hopefully clear up some things and bring more buyers on board with the brand's mission to give tech more of a personality. But in the future, the brand needs to simplify things for all its mobiles.