Carl Pei, co-founder of OnePlus, has announced that his new consumer technology company, Nothing, will launch its first product, a wireless earphone, this summer.

Nothing intends to compete with the best wireless earbuds already on the market, including the Apple AirPods, as well as make its headphones part of the "smart device ecosystem." Therefore, if the earbuds succeed in launching this year, expect to see integration with voice assistants, perhaps Alexa or Google Assistant.

Pei left OnePlus in late 2020 to found Nothing, but it was unclear what exactly the London-based company would produce shortly after it opened this January. Now, Pay told Bloomberg that it plans to start with wireless earbuds and move to a broader range of interconnected hardware products.

"We're going to start with a simpler product, wireless earbuds," he said. And eventually we want these devices to be able to talk to each other." [But there is no shortage of quality options, from the AirPods to the AirPods Pro, the excellent Jabra Elite 85t, and the new Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro. However, Pei himself already has experience with headphones, having supervised the OnePlus Buds in 2020.

The suggestion that Nothing products "talk to each other" suggests a more direct form of smart integration than what is currently available with the headphones' voice assistant feature. What is certain, however, is that we need to wait and see more.

In addition to smart features, expect Nothing's earbuds to aim to compete with features such as active noise cancellation (ANC), water resistance, and perhaps an Apple spatial audio equivalent. Again, no real details are available other than the fact that Nothing is working on this product. If a summer release is planned, it may be a little while before official specs are known.

Apple's AirPods 3 and AirPods Pro 2 are also rumored for a 2021 release, making this year already a big year for wireless headphones.