I think aside from the Essential product itself, the smartphone market is basically at a mature stage now just like the laptop market, so for a new product to s

I think aside from the Essential product itself, the smartphone market is basically at a mature stage now just like the laptop market, so for a new product to successfully enter the market, it would need a lot more money to be wasted for marketing and production just to compete with the giants. Mature market, smartphone users still growing but not as fast as before: https://www.statista.com/statistics/201182/forecast-of-smartphone-users-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/201182/forecast-of-smart... Microsoft apparently had ~1 billion dollar loss in first year in North America region while promoting and selling the Windows Surface which illustrates the difficulty in selling in a competitive mature market with high stakes. Microsoft makes loss when selling Surfaces: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2476544/tablets/with--1-7-billion-in-surface-losses--is-it-time-for-microsoft-to-pull-the-plug-.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2476544/tablets/with--... Also noteworthy, reputedly global smartphone sales in Q4-2017 sees downturn: https://www.ft.com/content/6ef7e850-17e6-11e8-9376-4a6390addb44 https://www.ft.com/content/6ef7e850-17e6-11e8-9376-4a6390add...