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Essential Raises $300M

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Re: Essential Raises $300M

#31

Post by mankash666 »

zrgiu_ wrote: post #22

I may be biased here, but I think almost everyone here is missing the point. Yes, Essential raised $300M because Andy Rubin is at the helm, but the bet is not on the phone they just launched. Its on the Smart Home. Here's a quote from Rubin himself: The long-term vision for Essential, Rubin said, is more closely aligned with the Essential Home, which Rubin hopes you’ll put in your kitchen or living room and use to co…

" If that's not a company that's worth $1B, especially led by someone with Andy Rubin's track record, I don't know what is."

With all due respect, there's zero justification in your statement for the $1B valuation. There is bias, of the favorable kind, towards Andy, nothing objective.

Remember that the open market doesn't trade on pure emotion/bias only. Otherwise, many statements like yours could've saved Lehman Brothers from hitting $0 in value

Re: Essential Raises $300M

#32

Post by prostoalex »

vqc wrote: post #10
rayuela wrote: post #3

This one honestly makes no sense to me. How is this company being valued at a Billion dollars with a flagship product that is indistinguishable in features and price from any of its competitors. Who the hell is going to gamble on a new, no name brand for a $700 product that is exactly like the very reputable products from Apple, Samsung, and 50 other phone manufacturers?!?

Maybe investor expectation is that a company like HTC or LG or some other none-Samsung/Apple/Google/Amazon company will buy Essential in order to get a strong team that is building a suite of products that tries to compete with Samsung/Apple/Google/Amazon. Can that justify the valuation?

Just like Microsoft's acquisition of Danger established Microsoft as a power player.

Re: Essential Raises $300M

#33

Post by prostoalex »

rayuela wrote: post #3

This one honestly makes no sense to me. How is this company being valued at a Billion dollars with a flagship product that is indistinguishable in features and price from any of its competitors. Who the hell is going to gamble on a new, no name brand for a $700 product that is exactly like the very reputable products from Apple, Samsung, and 50 other phone manufacturers?!?

1) The team has shown it can deliver, so there's a premium to be had.

2) Andy Rubin's personal net worth post-Danger and post-Android is in nine digits. He is likely to set the terms of the investment, and those who think it's too expensive have moved along.

Re: Essential Raises $300M

#34

Post by prostoalex »

notfried wrote: post #9
Fej wrote: post #2

Who actually expects this to succeed? It's a mediocre flagship.

Perhaps Rubin's end-game is to do a fork of Android that would break away reliance on Google and then be acquired by Samsung for a few billions.

> that would break away reliance on Google

There are substitutes for Search, Gmail, Apps Suite and Chrome, but the rest of the basic services are not that easy to replace. Maps with turn-by-turn directions, Google Translate, Google Photos with unlimited backup are all essentials for mobile consumers nowadays.

Re: Essential Raises $300M

#35

Post by toast0 »

prostoalex wrote: post #34
notfried wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps Rubin's end-game is to do a fork of Android that would break away reliance on Google and then be acquired by Samsung for a few billions.

> that would break away reliance on Google There are substitutes for Search, Gmail, Apps Suite and Chrome, but the rest of the basic services are not that easy to replace. Maps with turn-by-turn directions, Google Translate, Google Photos with unlimited backup are all essentials for mobile consumers nowadays.

Maps is doable, openstreetmaps is not bad or license from Here (or both). I'm not sure how many people need translate on a regular basis; I bet you could license that from someone though. Photos backup just takes money for storage, it's not particularly hard (you could instead work on making it easy to store with the end user's choice of provider, possibly with a revshare)

The real thing pulling to centralization is Google push, which requires play services, which requires playing by Google's rules.

If you don't have Google push on Android, you have to allow all the apps that want to get notifications from the server to keep open their own connections (which they may not have code for), which is going to kill battery life. The alternative is doing your own push services, but then you need to convince apps to support that, which generally requires apparent probable market share. Amazon managed to get some apps to do it for the Fire phone, but that didn't really go too well.

Re: Essential Raises $300M

#36

Post by mixedbit »

I believe there is a space on the smartphone market for a new powerful player. Today there are two mainstream choices iPhone and Android. A significant portion of iPhone users are devoted fans, but Android is more often just a practical choice. The first Essential phone is just another Android device, but based on the investment and people involved I don't think this is a long term plan. If Essential releases a device that is clearly distinguishable from Android phones, they may win many Android users.

Re: Essential Raises $300M

#37

Post by _pmf_ »

mixedbit wrote: post #36

I believe there is a space on the smartphone market for a new powerful player. Today there are two mainstream choices iPhone and Android. A significant portion of iPhone users are devoted fans, but Android is more often just a practical choice. The first Essential phone is just another Android device, but based on the investment and people involved I don't think this is a long term plan. If Essential releases a devic…

> If Essential releases a device that is clearly distinguishable from Android phones, they may win many Android users.

I don't know. HTC had some really high build quality models; did not do them much good (haptically, those were the best of their time). With Google beginning to crack down on vendors mangling the Android OS (part of the unified update strategy), differentiation from Android will be even more difficult.

Re: Essential Raises $300M

#38

Post by _pmf_ »

htormey wrote: post #13
rayuela wrote: post #3

This one honestly makes no sense to me. How is this company being valued at a Billion dollars with a flagship product that is indistinguishable in features and price from any of its competitors. Who the hell is going to gamble on a new, no name brand for a $700 product that is exactly like the very reputable products from Apple, Samsung, and 50 other phone manufacturers?!?

Basically the reason this thing gets $300 million is because Andy Rubin is at the helm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Rubin His track record is amazing (Danger/Android). I agree 100% with everything you have said but I'm willing to see where this goes based solely on his reputation. Surely their is something more to this than just building a high end Android phone with a little privacy tech thrown in.

> His track record is amazing (Danger/Android).

Let's not fool ourselves: Android gained momentum because it was what was there when Google needed it; it's not a particularly well engineered or cohesive system. Everything down to the very basics is rushed and haphazardly thrown together, and I cannot see any improvement (Kotlin is a smart move to exfiltrate from the legal corner Google has painted itself with Java-the-Language, but the fact that this came from a 3rd party is pretty telling).

Re: Essential Raises $300M

#39

Post by axaxs »

htormey wrote: post #13
rayuela wrote: post #3

This one honestly makes no sense to me. How is this company being valued at a Billion dollars with a flagship product that is indistinguishable in features and price from any of its competitors. Who the hell is going to gamble on a new, no name brand for a $700 product that is exactly like the very reputable products from Apple, Samsung, and 50 other phone manufacturers?!?

Basically the reason this thing gets $300 million is because Andy Rubin is at the helm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Rubin His track record is amazing (Danger/Android). I agree 100% with everything you have said but I'm willing to see where this goes based solely on his reputation. Surely their is something more to this than just building a high end Android phone with a little privacy tech thrown in.

I won't attack his history, I don't know it well. I will attack his sustainability, however. This phone won't sell. It is not innovative enough nor in touch with the market.

I will say I watched his interview at codecon, and he seemed completely self absorbed. It didn't help that he kept bragging about Android popularity, which he had little to do with, on top of its awful design.

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