TL;DR
- The Nothing Phone 1 will be sold initially via an invite system.
- This will be similar to how the first OnePlus phones were sold.
- The invite codes may be available to the Nothing community and early supporters first.
Anyone who has followed OnePlus from the beginning knows that the company has changed a lot over the years. It sold its early phones exclusively via an invite system. While this made it hard to get the phone, it allowed OnePlus to slowly ramp up stock and artificially keep OnePlus in the news for even longer. It looks like Nothing is taking a page from early OnePlus. The Nothing company, founded by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, will also have its own invite system to sell the Nothing Phone 1.
Read more: Everything we know so far about the Nothing Phone 1
In a video posted by the company, Pei says, “When you’re making a very complicated product like a smartphone, It takes some time to ramp up. We could either wait until we’ve accumulated a lot of phones and start the sales then, or we can start selling as soon as possible. We chose the latter.”
Pei goes on to explain that Nothing wanted to have “at least some” phones in the hands of people. This is why the company decided that the Nothing Phone 1 would initially sell through an invite system “so that people who deserve it the most will be able to buy it in the beginning.”
So how will the invite system work? The company says that it wants to make sure early supporters and community members get the phone first. Once that happens and the company ramps-up production, the Phone 1 will start selling more widely.
Nothing hasn’t shared the exact details of the invite system, but we’ll update this article when we know more.
Back in 2014, OnePlus sent out its initial invite codes to members of its online forums for the OnePlus One phone. After that, OnePlus One owners were able to send their own invite codes to others. The codes had to be accepted within 24 hours. The company continued with this kind of marketing until it ditched its invite method in 2016. If we had to take a guess, Nothing might follow a similar trajectory.
