Company / division: Essential
Essential Has Reportedly Sold Only 5,000 Phones Through Sprint So Far (Sep 27, 2017)
BayStreet Research financial analysts say that Sprint has sold just 5,000 Essential smartphones since its launch earlier this month, as reported here by FierceWireless. My guess is that the figure is based on channel checks, in which analysts call around random stores and ask how many units they’ve sold, and then add those up to create an estimate. Given the number is so low, I’m guessing the analysts found an average of just one sale per store. None of this should surprise anyone – I’ve been skeptical about Essential right from the start, and though I’d guess it’s sold quite a few more devices through its own online store than Sprint has, the numbers are likely still very small. Given the massive financial backing Essential has received, it’s got plenty of runway to go to figure all this out, possibly including a broader carrier distribution once its exclusivity arrangement with Sprint is over. But it’s increasingly clear that even a well-reviewed phone from a name with a history in the industry can’t break through the oligopoly that is the US smartphone market.
via FierceWireless
Essential CEO Andy Rubin Apologies for Customer Privacy Breach (Aug 31, 2017)
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Essential Appears to Have Caused a Major Privacy Breach Through Email to Customers (Aug 30, 2017)
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Essential Phone Reviews Highlight Challenge of Android Differentiation (Aug 18, 2017)
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Essential Begins Phone Sales, Sprint Offers Discount for 18-Month Payment Plan (Aug 17, 2017)
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Essential Phone Readying to Ship Within a Week, White Model Coming Later (Aug 16, 2017)
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Essential Gets Additional Funding from Amazon’s Alexa Fund, Tencent (Aug 9, 2017)
Essential, Android founder Andy Rubin’s fledgling smartphone outfit, has announced additional funding from companies including Tencent and Amazon, but still refuses to say exactly when its smartphone will go on sale, saying only that a date will be announced in a week or so. It’s also announced that Amazon and Best Buy will be the retail partners for launch, while Sprint was announced earlier as the exclusive US carrier partner. If you’ve read any of my previous pieces on Essential, especially the first one, you’ll know how skeptical I am that an effort like this can succeed. The market is so mature at this point and the distribution and other battle lines so clear that breaking in with yet another Android phone will be a real challenge, one further exacerbated by what’s going to be limited distribution on the weakest carrier in the US. The funding is therefore intriguing, because it suggests these backers see something in the phone that I don’t. Importantly, it’s Amazon’s Alexa Fund specifically that’s making that company’s investment, something the Journal piece I’m linking to here doesn’t dig into at all, but which suggests that the phone will major on Alexa integration, something hinted at earlier by Andy Rubin as part of a statement about the phone’s ecumenical approach to voice assistants, but not made explicit. And backing from both Foxconn and Tencent is intriguing in the context of a phone that’s mostly being launched in North America for now. Recent conversations I’ve had suggest Amazon’s smartphone sales business is going very well, but of course many of its sales are of the kind of low-end prepaid handsets people buy outright anyway rather than the higher-end premium hardware Essential will be selling. I continue to be very bearish on Essential, but at least it sounds like we might finally see the hardware hit the market soon.
via WSJ
Essential Phone Fails to Launch Within Promised 30-Day Window (Jul 6, 2017)
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Essential Phone Will be Exclusive to Sprint in US, Further Limiting Appeal (Jun 12, 2017)
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★ Andy Rubin’s Essential Announces Yet Another Phone Claiming to Change the Market (May 30, 2017)
The Verge seems to have secured the first of two exclusive looks at Android founder Andy Rubin’s new phone, from his company Essential (Recode’s Code Conference will have an interview with Rubin tonight where I’d expect him to share more). So far, there’s nothing about the software, beyond the assumption that it’ll run Android. So the focus is entirely on the hardware design, including the materials, connectors, and a theoretical ecosystem of modular add-ons (for now, there’s just one: a 360° camera). The reporting on this is all a little breathless – Andy Rubin has quite a reputation and anything he launches will be accorded a fair measure of respect. But the pitch here feels so much like almost every other new entrant in the market, a mix of straw man arguments about the current state of the market, grandiose claims about how all that will change, ambitions to build an ecosystem without any evidence that any other player is interested, and nothing at all about distribution, which continues to be the key question in the US smartphone market. We’ll hopefully know a little more by tonight, but I’m extremely skeptical that this phone will do any better than any other recent attempt to change the smartphone market. In the meantime, that won’t stop this project from getting tons of positive media attention in the run-up to an actual launch sometime later this year. It’s worth noting that beyond the phone there are some other bits and pieces too, including a smart home OS and speaker with a screen, but again the details are so short and claims so grand that I’m inclined to ignore them until we actually know something specific about them.
via The Verge