The essential revolves around the drain, firing 30% of staff

Things are not going well for Essential, the startup of Andy Rubin's smartphone. After announcing the cancellation of its next smartphone earlier this year, the company will now lay off 30% of its workforce, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Essential has produced a great product for its very first smartphone. The Essential phone had a unique ceramic body, was at the origin of the notch design trend and came with the Android stock. The support of the Essential Update has also been excellent. In addition to consistent monthly security updates, the software delivered an update for Android 9 Pie from day one, an unprecedented speed for most Android OEMs. Essential did all this while in the news, it looked like a dead society and was considering a sale.

The essential phone finally was not competitive, though. He had flagship prices, but could not cope with the competition, lacking a good camera, screen and water resistance. Essential was also a brand new business and it's hard to trust a company with no track record. The phone did not sell well and, finally, fire sales raised the price from $ 700 to $ 250.

The layoffs of 120 Essential staff members touched the "hardware, marketing and sales divisions," according to Bloomberg. In an email, an Essential spokesperson called the move a "hard decision to make." We are sorry for the consequences for our colleagues who are leaving the company and who are doing everything they can to help them in their jobs. future career. " Apparently, Essential does not give up on a future product. "We are confident that our focus on our products will help us provide a truly revolutionary consumer product," the company added.

According to previous reports, Essential has canceled the Essential Phone 2 to use the other product in its range, a smart speaker. Renders introduced a product that looked like an Amazon Echo Dot, but this speaker was running a new Essential operating system called "Ambient OS." According to another report released by Bloomberg last week, the smart speaker has been "suspended" and the company is now rotating to a smartphone. Do not imagine an "Essential Phone 2", according to the report. Essential felt that the original phone was "too similar to the others on the market".

So the new phone "is not like a standard smartphone" according to Bloomberg. The device will supposedly have a "small" screen and will rely on Essential's voice and AI commands to perform the normal tasks of your smartphone. Bloomberg said that "Rubin would like to capture the imagination of people with a product really different from alternatives". The company hopes that the phone will be ready to be shown to industry partners at the CES conference in January, assuming that it no longer turns to another product or ceases operations in the meantime.