October 2022. Nothing is doing what every hardware brand does after a successful first product: it is building the adjacent SKUs that fill out the product family. The ear (Stick), announced this week, is a smaller, lighter earbud without ANC, selling for £79 alongside a new color variant of the original ear (1) called the ear (1)i. Two products, one event, a clear message: Nothing is not a one-product company anymore.
The ear (Stick): what it is and who it is for
The ear (Stick) has a cylindrical case that twists to open, a design Nothing is marketing as distinctive in a category full of lid-hinge cases. Half-in-ear design rather than the ear (1)’s in-ear seal. No active noise cancellation. 29 hours total battery life with the case. £79. The target buyer is someone who wants the Nothing aesthetic and the transparency design without the ear (1)’s in-ear fit or the £99 price point.
The no-ANC decision is the most consequential design choice. ANC is the feature that made the ear (1) genuinely competitive against devices at twice its price. Without it, the ear (Stick) is competing on design and brand rather than on technical specification. That is a viable strategy for a brand whose design is as distinctive as Nothing’s, but it is a narrower audience: buyers who are choosing earbuds primarily for aesthetics rather than functionality.
The ear (1)i and what the naming tells us
The ear (1)i is a mid-cycle color update to the original ear (1), adding a white color option alongside the original white-and-black transparent design. The existence of a mid-cycle variant six months after the original launch tells us something about Nothing’s ambitions: the company is operating on a product cadence closer to Apple’s accessory refresh cycle than to the typical Android earbuds schedule. This is not a negative observation. It is evidence that Nothing is thinking about the ear product line as an ongoing platform rather than a single product with a successor.
Whether the market responds positively to two earbuds products and a phone in the same category year is the test. Nothing has gone from zero products in January 2021 to three products in October 2022. The pace is fast, the products are coherent, and the brand identity is consistent across all of them. The next question is whether the Phone (2) builds on the Phone (1)’s positioning or changes it. That answer is not coming today, but the groundwork is being laid in how Nothing manages this product family right now.
Part of Nothing Company: The Complete Story, my running diary of Nothing from founding to global expansion.