The essential phone has announced its closure 5 years after it was first launched into the market. The phone brand belongs to Andy Rubin Android’s Co-Creator.
Essential had planned to release several phones among the project GEM, a smart home speaker and its own operating system. This would rival android OS and iOS but end releasing only one handset.
Reportedly, It had been working on an unusual super-slim smartphone called Gem.
In a statement, the company concluded that In October 2019, they introduced Project GEM. This was a new mobile experience its hardware, software and cloud teams have been building and testing for the past few years.
“Our vision was to invent a mobile computing paradigm that more seamlessly integrated with people’s lifestyle needs. Despite our best efforts, we’ve now taken Gem as far as we can. We regrettably have no clear path to deliver it to customers. Given this, we have made the difficult decision to cease operations and shutdown Essential”.
in the statement, the company noted that the security update realised for PH-1 on February 3 will be the last one from the essential team.
As the company winds down, PH-1 will remain functional. Essential also notes that they will not be able to provide any additional updates or customer support.
Current Newton Mail users will have access to the service through April 30, 2020. For developer fans, a prebuilt of our vendor image and everything else needed to keep hacking on PH-1 will be hosted on GitHub.
Essential phone brand joins the Windows phone in exiting the market. Microsoft ceased to produce further devices after losing its market domination to the competitors Android OS and iOS.
Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software was one of the top mobile platforms in the 2000s. The company’s mobile decline began with the rise of the iPhone’s far more intuitive iOS and was cemented over several Microsoft software releases that failed to compete with Apple and Google’s rapidly maturing Android OS.
Recently, TCL as announced the end of their agreement with Blackberry a sign that could indicate Balckberry is exiting the market as well.
There is no further indication of the sudden closure of the company. But chances are they could be moving into a different space.