Android Creator’s Startup Essential Products Cuts About 30% of Staff

Re:Android Creator’s Startup Essential Products Cuts About 3... by nine_k on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @03:59PM (#18243148)

The market is there, of course! It just appears to be narrower that what's required to sustain a company like this, at least at the price point they chose.

I can imagine such a phone as a no-compromises ultra-premium product for the select few who want utter privacy and safety, and would pay at e.g. the iPhone's price point for a comparable level of assurance.

I can imagine such a phone at a low-end, cheaper segment for the privacy-conscious but not very well-off who could tolerate a number of compromises in features.

At a mass-market segment it, unfortunately, did not seem to work too well, though.

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Re:Android Creator’s Startup Essential Products Cuts About 3... by notyourday on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @04:13PM (#18243300)

It was overpriced. They sold what? 50k phones at about $500 a pop average before cutting the price to $350? That's $25m in revenue after raising $300m. They should have continued working on a line of phones. Instead they switched gears, dropped the price on a phone and started doing a fire sale.

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Re:Android Creator’s Startup Essential Products Cuts About 3... by radicaldreamer on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @06:18PM (#18244335)

It's kind of bizarre planning to bet the whole company one one product whose go-to-market strategy wasn't clear.

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Re:Android Creator’s Startup Essential Products Cuts About 3... by notyourday on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @06:48PM (#18244495)

If you decide you are going to be a smartphone company, after you do sufficiently well on your first phone you do not go and decide to go into the market of connected home.

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