Akis Evangelidis did not bury this one in a press release nobody reads. He put it out on X, in plain English, and the honesty is almost the bigger story than the cancellation itself.
There is no CMF Phone 3 Pro this year. Nothing’s India co-founder confirmed it directly: the team was working on a successor to the CMF Phone 2 Pro, but memory prices have moved so far out of range that the phone they could ship would not have felt like progress. So they killed it. Simple as that.
Here’s the line that matters most from his post: a phone “that feels like a genuine step forward at a price that makes sense for CMF” was not something they could build right now. Translate that out of corporate-speak and it just means the math broke. RAM and storage got too expensive to hit CMF’s price point without gutting the phone or charging more than the brand is built on.
Table of contents
What Akis Evangelidis Actually Said
For anyone who has not seen the post, here is the gist without the spin. Nothing had been quietly working on a follow-up to the CMF Phone 2 Pro, the budget phone that picked up MKBHD’s Budget Phone of the Year award and built genuine goodwill for the sub-brand. Fans had been asking for the next one for a while.
Instead of staying quiet and missing a launch window, Evangelidis chose to say it outright. No new CMF phone this year. The reason given is rising memory chip costs, not weak demand, not internal restructuring, not some vague “market conditions” line companies love to hide behind.
He did soften the blow a little. There are still new products coming from CMF this year, apparently in categories the brand has not touched before, and the broader Nothing lineup for 2026 is not finished either. But the CMF Phone 3 Pro, the phone people were actually waiting for, is off the table.
Why Memory Got So Expensive, And It Is Not What You Think
Here is where this stops being a CMF story and becomes an everyone story. Evangelidis has talked about this before in more detail, and the explanation is almost funny if it were not so painful for your wallet.
AI data centres are eating the world’s memory supply. Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, all of them are buying DRAM chips at a scale that smartphone makers simply cannot compete with on price. A memory chip that cost around twenty dollars inside a mid-range phone roughly a year ago now costs upwards of a hundred dollars. In some configurations it has touched one hundred and twenty dollars. That is not a small bump. That is a five to six times jump on one component.
Think about what that does to a phone priced at twenty five thousand rupees. Memory used to be a manageable line item. Now it can eat a chunk of the entire bill of materials on its own, before you have even paid for the display, the camera sensors, the battery, or the chipset.
| Component cost comparison | Roughly a year ago | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Mid-range memory chip | Around $20 | $100 to $120 |
| Increase | Baseline | 5x to 6x |
And this is not a one quarter blip that resolves itself. The shortage is expected to runn well into 2027 by most industry estimates, and rupee depreciation is adding its own separate layer of cost pressure on top, since most of these chips are imported.
The Bigger Pattern, Not Just Nothing
CMF cancelling one phone is a headline. The underlying trend is the real story, and it touches every brand selling phones between ten thousand and thirty thousand rupees in India.
That price band is the backbone of the Indian smartphone market. It is where Redmi, Realme, POVA, iQOO, and a dozen others fight for the same buyer every single quarter. If memory costs keep climbing the way they have, expect one of three things to happen across the board, and honestly, probably all three at once.
Prices go up first. That is the obvious one. Brands either raise the MRP or they quietly trim the warranty period, the charger in the box, or the camera hardware to protect their margin. You have likely already noticed phones in your usual price bracket creeping up by a thousand or two over the last few months. This is why.
Specs stop racing forward. The era of “more RAM, more storage, same price, every six months” that defined Indian budget phones for a decade is genuinely slowing down. Evangelidis more or less said this himself. Why ship 12GB of RAM at a loss when 8GB at a sustainable price keeps the company alive.
And here is the one that should worry brands more than consumers. People are simply holding onto their phones longer. When the upgrade does not feel meaningfully better and costs noticeably more, the easy decision is to not upgrade at all. Refurbished phone sales are reportedly climbing as a direct result, and that is rational behaviour from buyers, even if it is bad news for every phone maker’s quarterly numbers.
Why “Looking Great” Is Not Enough Anymore
Here is the part of this that I think Nothing and CMF deserve real credit for, even while it sucks for fans who wanted a new phone. Beautiful industrial design, the swappable backs, the modular accessories, the whole CMF aesthetic that made the Phone 1 and Phone 2 Pro stand out, none of that means anything if the price tag stops making sense for the buyer it was built for.
CMF’s entire identity was built on one promise: design and customisation that did not usually show up below twenty thousand rupees. The moment that phone needs to be priced like a flagship just to cover memory costs, the whole pitch falls apart. A gorgeous phone at thirty five thousand rupees is not a CMF phone anymore. It is just another mid-ranger with nicer paint.
Evangelidis seems to understand this better than most product leads do. Shipping something merely to hit a yearly cadence, when it cannot deliver the value the brand promises, would have damaged CMF’s reputation far more than skipping a year ever could.
What This Means If You Are Planning an Upgrade
A few honest, practical takeaways if you are sitting on an older phone right now and wondering what to do.
If you were specifically waiting for a CMF Phone 3 Pro, that wait is over for 2026. Worth looking at the existing CMF Phone 2 Pro instead, especially if prices on current stock dip during upcoming sale events, since new stock replenishment at the old cost basis is becoming less likely by the month.
If you need a phone now, buying sooner rather than later is probably the smarter financial move. Industry voices including Evangelidis have been fairly direct that pricing pressure is expected to get worse before it gets better, not the other way around.
If your current phone still works fine, there is genuinely less pressure to upgrade than there was two or three years ago. The specs race has cooled. The gap between a 2023 flagship and a 2026 mid-ranger is smaller than the gap used to be between consecutive years of the same phone.
CMF Phone 2 Pro: Still a Solid Pick Right Now
With the Phone 3 Pro off the table for this year, the existing CMF Phone 2 Pro remains the brand’s best option in the Indian market. It is the phone that won MKBHD’s Budget Phone of the Year award, and it still holds up well against the competition at its price point.
| Specification | CMF Phone 2 Pro |
|---|---|
| Display | 6.77 inch Flexible AMOLED, 120Hz, 3000 nits peak brightness |
| Processor | MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Pro 5G |
| RAM | 8GB |
| Storage | 128GB / 256GB, expandable up to 2TB |
| Rear cameras | 50MP main, 50MP 2x telephoto, 8MP ultrawide |
| Front camera | 16MP |
| Battery | 5000mAh with 33W fast charging |
| Build | IP54 rated, aluminium camera housing |
You can check current pricing and availability on the CMF Phone 2 Pro (Light Green, 8GB RAM, 128GB Storage) here: CMF Phone 2 Pro Light Green 128GB
The White colour variant (8GB RAM, 128GB Storage) is also available here: CMF Phone 2 Pro White 128GB
Both links were checked at the time of writing and lead to live, in-stock listings. Prices on these fluctuate with ongoing sale events, so it is worth checking the current price before buying.
The Honest Bit at the End
I will say this plainly. Most brands, when they cannot deliver a meaningful upgrade, ship the phone anyway and let the marketing team paper over the gaps. Nothing did not do that here, and that is worth pointing out even if you are disappointed about not getting a new CMF phone this year.
The bigger worry is not really CMF. It is the entire ten to thirty thousand rupee segment that the Indian market leans on so heavily. If memory chip prices stay this brutal into 2027, expect this exact story, a delayed launch, a quiet price hike, a trimmed spec sheet, to repeat across multiple brands before this year is out.
For now, hold onto what you have if it still works. And if you are buying, buy sooner rather than later.