Carl Pei, or Pei Yu (; born September 11, 1989), is a Chinese- Swedish entrepreneur. He co-founded OnePlus along with Pete Lau, in 2013 and was the director of OnePlus Global. He left the firm in October 2020 to start a new hardware venture, called Nothing.

Early life

Pei was born in 1989 in

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), Chinese postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the Capital city, capital of the China, People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's Li ...

, China; his family soon moved to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

, and then to

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...

, where Pei grew up. He pursued a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University o ...

degree in 2008 at the

Stockholm School of Economics The Stockholm School of Economics (SSE; sv, Handelshögskolan i Stockholm, HHS) is a private business school located in city district Vasastaden in the central part of Stockholm, Sweden. SSE offers BSc, MSc and MBA programs, along with ...

, but he dropped out in 2011 to work full-time in the Chinese

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whi ...

industry.

Career

Pei joined

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...

in 2010, and he worked at the company for three months. After Nokia, the fan website Pei had created about

Meizu Meizu Technology Co., Ltd. () is a Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer based in Zhuhai, Guangdong. Founded in 2003 by Jack Wong, Meizu began as a manufacturer of MP3 players and later MP4 players. In 2008, Meizu moved its focus to smar ...

had caught the attention of that company's

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...

branch, and Pei started working in Meizu's marketing team in 2011. In November, he joined Oppo as its international markets manager, where he worked directly under Pete Lau.

OnePlus

Pei co-founded OnePlus with Pete Lau in

Shenzhen Shenzhen (; ; ; ), also historically known as Sham Chun, is a major sub-provincial city and one of the special economic zones of China. The city is located on the east bank of the Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern provi ...

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020 ...

in December 2013. Their first device, the

OnePlus One The OnePlus One (colloquially abbreviated to OPO and also known as OnePlus 1) is an Android smartphone manufactured by OnePlus. Unveiled in April 2014, it is the first product by OnePlus. The OnePlus One was designed to compare favorably – ...

, sold close to a million units in 2014, despite a sales target of only 50,000. In July 2015, Pei presented the

OnePlus 2 The OnePlus 2 (also abbreviated as OP2) is a smartphone designed by OnePlus. It is the successor to the OnePlus One. OnePlus revealed the phone on 28 July 2015 via virtual reality, using Google's Cardboard visor and their own app. OnePlus sol ...

through a virtual reality video on YouTube. It was claimed to be the first product launch in virtual reality, and it has been viewed over 304,800 times as of August 2022. After the unveiling of the

OnePlus 3 The OnePlus 3 (also abbreviated as OP3) is a smartphone produced by OnePlus. It was revealed on 14 June 2016. The phone was unveiled in a virtual reality event and OnePlus offered its customers Loop VR headsets to experience the event using th ...

in June 2016, Pei claimed it was the company's most popular smartphone, based on the

Net Promoter Score Net promoter score (NPS) is a widely used market research metric that is based on a single survey question asking respondents to rate the likelihood that they would recommend a company, product, or a service to a friend or colleague. The NPS is a ...

. When asked in November 2016, Pei said the reason for the upgrade after only three months was because they did not want to wait to improve the hardware. Pei claimed the

OnePlus 5 The OnePlus 5 (also abbreviated as OP5) is a smartphone made by OnePlus. It is the successor to the OnePlus 3T, which was released in 2016. The OnePlus 5 was officially unveiled during a keynote on 20 June 2017 and first released on June 20, 20 ...

to be their fastest-selling device to date shortly after its release in June 2017. Pei oversaw the design and marketing of OnePlus devices until leaving the company in October 2020.

Nothing

Following his departure from OnePlus, Pei announced Nothing on January 27, 2021. According to Pei, Nothing’s mission is to remove barriers between people and technology to create a seamless digital future. The company is based in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

and landed a number of notable investors, such as

iPod The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes wa ...

inventor Tony Fadell, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin,

Reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, imag ...

CEO Steve Huffman, and YouTuber Casey Neistat. On February 25, the company announced Teenage Engineering as founding partners, mainly responsible for the design aesthetic of the brand and its products. Nothing's first product "ear (1)" has been launched on July 27, 2021. On March 23, 2022, Nothing announced its first smartphone, the "phone (1)" with an anticipated release date of Summer 2022.

Publicity

In July 2015, during an interview by ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' about how OnePlus was created, Pei stated, "...we looked at all the Android phones on the market and there wasn't one phone that was good enough for us ourselves to use." In 2014 and 2015, he told ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' and ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

'' that "OnePlus wasn’t meant to become a global company at the beginning. The main focus was taking on the Chinese market. ... for the global markets team, we are a bunch of young people without a lot of experience. It was just like an experiment, 'Hey, do the global markets and see what happens. Do whatever you want.' We call our group 'a

within our company', or a start-up within a bigger company." and "Very soon our sales outside of China will surpass sales in China."

Awards

In April 2016, Pei was included in the 2016 edition of the ''

Marketing Week ''Marketing Week'' is a website focused on the marketing industry, based in London, that grew out of what was a weekly, and latterly monthly, print magazine. History and profile ''Marketing Week'' was launched in March 1978. Its co-founders were ...

'' Vision 100 list. In January 2016, he was included in the 2016 edition of the ''Forbes'' 30 Under 30 list for his influence in the technology industry. and in 2019, he was included in the 2019 edition of the Fortune ''Fortune'' 40 Under 40 list .

References

External links

Carl Pei
on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pei, Carl Living people Businesspeople in telecommunications Technology business executives Meizu people OnePlus people Nothing Technology people Chinese emigrants to Sweden 1989 births