What you need to know
- One Plus co-founder and Nothing chief Carl Pei says he used to be Apple's biggest fan.
- However, Pei now believes innovation at the company has slowed down "a lot".
- In an interview with CNBC he said that consumer tech is like the PC industry of the 80s and 90s, where everyone just made grey boxes.
One-Plus co-founder and Nothing chief Carl Pei has this week said that whilst he used to be Apple's biggest fan, innovation at the company has slowed down a lot over the last couple of years.
In an interview with CNBC Pei spoke about his new company Nothing, and its plan to release a new pair of wireless earbuds in June to compete with Apple's AirPods. Speaking about product design in general he said "We want to bring this element of human warmth back into our products. Products are not just cold electronics... They're designed by people and intelligently used by people. It feels like product companies (today) are run by large corporations."
According to the report Pei wants his company to change tech in the same way Apple disrupted the PC market with the iMac G3 back in the day, describing the tech industry of today as being like the 80s and 90s PC industry where "everybody made grey boxes".
On Apple directly Pei said he used to be Apple's "biggest fan", but that in recent years " innovation has slowed down a lot". Pei says that people have a general feeling of apathy towards new products:
"There's a general feeling of, 'Why should I upgrade my tech?' because each new generation is sort of similar to the previous one" Pei added. "In the past, people were so optimistic about technology. But now people are kind of indifferent. And there must be a way of kind of breaking the cycle."
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