Andy Rubin's New Billion Dollar Company Has Sold Only 5,000 Essential Phones!

[DroidModderX]

Back in August Andy Rubin's new Essential company was valued at $1Billion after the hyped announcement of the Essential phone in May. When the phone was announced it would have been one of a few handsets on the market offering a minimal bezel design. The phone was attractive to many Android faithfuls because it was designed by one of the founding fathers of Android who was teasing that the phone would ship with a nearly vanilla Android experience.

The phone was eventually made available to purchase in August in one color although three were shown off at the press event. You can still only buy the phone in Black. For many who purchased the phone shipments were delayed to the point that several people gave up and cancelled their order. When the phones did finally arrive they were plagued with buggy software. The highly touted camera wasn't all that great. With all the problems the phone is still being sold at the hefty price of $700.

It is now being reported by BayStreet Research that the Essential phone has sold a meager 5,000 units. Compare that to the hundreds of thousands of Note 8 pre-orders Samsung had and things look quite bleak for Essential. That being said this is their first attempt at a major phone launch and it can only get better from here.

via FierceWireless

 

[Dusty]

You can do whatever with the software, but the ONE thing you have to do if you want people to buy your phone...

...make a camera that is among the top 3 or 4 of current devices. If you don't do that you can forget it. If people were talking about how good the camera was they would have sold, at minimum, 10 to 20 times more devices. Ask OnePlus.

 

[kinfolk248]

For $700 it should have had more to offer than a $400 phone... Should have had every possible hardware and software feature available within vanilla limits...

 

[me just sayin]

hopefully, the second generation will do better. he messed up with the first model from missed shipping dates to other issues...just wonder if this is going to be a repeat of the amazon fire,

 

[hammerhead13]

This will be the next Amazon FirePhone in terms of the Hype to Flop. Only Difference is Amazon pushed the Heck out of it. Granted the FirePhone was more Midlevel and the Limited FireOS didnt help but it was and Example how a Billion Dollar Company Pushed a Device so Hard only to Fell the Burn in the End.

 

[danDroid]

Nice design, but for that price I don't think it's exciting enough to purchase. If they really want to break in the market, they should take the loss on the first gen devices and blow them out at with a $300-$400 price. That would get me motivated to buy one.

Remember when HP released the touchpad? It was DOA until they cut the price and blew them out. It became an instant hit!

 

[xeene]

For $700 it has to be waterproof, include sd card, fingerprint scanner, dual cameras, headphone jack and the most important GIANT SIZED BATTERY!
Essential phone isn't worth more then $200.