Nothing Cancels Its CMF Budget Phone for 2026 as RAM Prices Make the Economics Impossible

Since Tim Cook warned earlier this week that Apple's iPhone price hikes are unavoidable due to AI-driven memory demand, the RAM cost crisis has now claimed its most direct product casualty yet: Nothing's entire 2026 CMF phone lineup.

Nothing co-founder Akis Evangelidis posted on X on June 19 confirming the cancellation. His words were plain: "We were working on a successor but with memory prices where they are right now, we can't build a phone that feels like a genuine step forward at a price that makes sense for CMF. As a result, we've decided not to launch a new CMF phone this year."

The CMF line was designed specifically to compete at the budget end. The CMF Phone 2 Pro launched in India in April 2025 starting at roughly $200. According to Evangelidis in follow-up comments reported by Android Authority, launching that same device with identical specs today would cost approximately Rs. 30,000 to Rs. 35,000, or roughly $318 to $370. That is a price increase of 60 to 85 percent on a phone whose entire identity was affordability.

The CMF Phone 2 Pro has also been out of stock for some time, according to 9to5Google, likely because Nothing cannot replenish inventory at the original price.

What the Numbers Actually Look Like

Nothing CEO Carl Pei had already flagged this trajectory. As reported by The Verge, Pei stated that for the mid-range Nothing Phone 4A, memory costs doubled between when the device was greenlit and when it launched, then doubled again after launch. Pei added that "memory is now the most expensive component in a smartphone," outpricing the processor and display combined and potentially accounting for more than 50 percent of the total hardware bill, according to 9to5Google.

Historically, the SoC and display were where smartphone manufacturers spent the bulk of their component budget. Memory being more expensive than both combined is a structural shift, not a temporary blip.

The Strongest Case for Waiting It Out

The fair counterargument is that component markets are cyclical. DRAM and NAND prices have spiked and crashed before, and a company patient enough to hold its product line could re-enter at a lower cost basis in 2027. Nothing is not burning the CMF brand, just skipping a year. Evangelidis confirmed that CMF still has other products launching this year, including what he described as "entirely new categories," though he did not specify what those are. Skipping a phone cycle to avoid releasing a product that undercuts the brand's value proposition is a defensible business call, not necessarily a sign the line is finished.

However, 9to5Google notes there is "no end in sight" to the memory price spike, and the factors driving it, primarily AI infrastructure demand consuming enormous quantities of high-bandwidth memory, are not going away on a predictable schedule.

What Comes Next for Nothing's Phones

Evangelidis confirmed in his X post that Nothing still has smartphones planned for 2026, just not under the CMF label. Nothing's official X account has begun its trademark dot-matrix Pokémon-themed product teasers for two devices codenamed "Jumpluff" and "Blastoise," according to Android Authority.

Android Authority's analysis suggests Blastoise, which could launch as the Nothing Phone 4, may be a rechristened version of the now-canceled CMF Phone 3 Pro. If that's accurate, the device would be repositioned upmarket rather than scrapped outright, which would make sense given that the CMF pricing floor has effectively collapsed.

Jumpluff, by contrast, is speculated to be a new audio product, though Nothing has not confirmed anything.

The Broader Context

Nothing is a small player feeling this most acutely, but it is not alone. Apple's Tim Cook publicly called the memory cost situation "unsustainable" earlier this week, according to The Verge. Samsung, Google, and every other manufacturer building phones with AI-capable specs are absorbing the same input cost increases. The difference is that companies with premium pricing power can pass costs to consumers. Budget brands like CMF cannot.

The unresolved question now is whether Nothing can bring back a true sub-$300 CMF phone in 2027, or whether the economics have permanently pushed its entry-level ceiling to a price point that no longer competes with the Moto G and Pixel A series.