Nothing has pulled the plug on a new CMF phone for this year, and the reason is as blunt as it is disruptive: RAM prices have climbed too far. The company says the planned successor to the CMF Phone 2 Pro cannot be made to CMF’s standards without breaking the price balance that defines the brand.
The decision highlights how sharply memory costs are reshaping the smartphone market. For budget-focused devices, even a modest rise in component prices can erase the room needed for meaningful upgrades while keeping the final retail price attractive.
CMF’s price formula is under pressure
Nothing co-founder Akis Evangelidis confirmed the cancellation in a post on X, saying the company had been preparing a follow-up to the CMF Phone 2 Pro. He said the project no longer made sense because the surge in RAM costs made it impossible to deliver a true step forward at a reasonable CMF price.
That detail matters because CMF has built its identity around aggressive pricing. In that segment, a new model must do more than merely arrive with a fresh name; it has to feel like a worthwhile upgrade without pushing buyers into a higher bracket.
Nothing’s choice suggests that, for now, preserving the brand’s value proposition is more important than forcing out a product that would not meet expectations. The company appears unwilling to launch a device that looks like an upgrade on paper but fails to justify its place in the lineup.
RAM is becoming the most painful component
Pressure from memory pricing was also described earlier by Carl Pei, Nothing’s CEO and co-founder. He said the memory crisis had heavily affected production costs for the company’s mid-range phones.
Pei used the Nothing Phone (4a) as an example, noting that memory costs doubled between the time the device was being developed and when it launched. He added that those costs doubled again after launch, making RAM the most expensive hardware component in a smartphone.
That kind of movement explains why low-cost and mid-range devices are being hit so hard. These products depend on tight margins, so rising RAM costs quickly force manufacturers to rethink specifications, delay launches, or abandon projects altogether.
The problem is bigger than one brand
Nothing is not facing this pressure alone. Apple is also dealing with the same supply-chain strain, showing that the issue extends across the wider industry rather than a single market tier.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said earlier this week that the company would raise product prices because of component cost pressure. He also described the situation as no longer sustainable.
That wider context makes the CMF decision easier to understand. If even a company with Apple’s scale is adjusting prices, smaller brands with stricter target pricing face a far tougher challenge in protecting both margins and product appeal.
For Nothing, the stakes are especially high because the company must balance rising costs against user expectations for generational improvement. If the upgrade cannot be delivered without a noticeable price jump, the better move may be to wait rather than release a compromised device.
Even with the CMF phone launch off the table this year, Nothing has not gone quiet. Evangelidis said the company still has other product launches planned in the near future.
For now, though, the cancelled CMF successor is one of the clearest signs that the RAM crunch is no longer just a back-end supply issue. It is now shaping which phones get made, which ones get delayed, and which ones never make it to market.
