Android co-founder’s smartphone startup Essential is essentially dead
Having co-founded Android Inc. in 2003 and leading the charge on the mobile operating system for nearly a decade after Google bought the company for at least $50 million, Andy Rubin had a great deal of momentum when he left to chart his own course. The pursuit that we followed closest after his departure from Google was Essential, which he founded in late 2015. The company had big plans to shake up the smartphone market, but a series of roadblocks, which included reports of Rubin's alleged sexual misconduct while at Google, derailed those plans.
On Wednesday, February 12th, after having launched just a single retail product, Essential announced that it would be shutting down. Another device dubbed Project GEM was in the works, one with a bizarre form factor that looked like nothing else on the market, but Essential says it has "no clear path to deliver it to customers."
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Android co-founder’s smartphone startup Essential is essentially dead originally appeared on BGR.com on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 at 15:11:04 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.