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Essential drops 30 percent of employees, mostly from hardware and sales

The large round of Essential layoffs paint a bleak picture for the struggling smartphone maker.
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Published onOctober 17, 2018

TL;DR
  • Essential just terminated about a third of its staff.
  • Most of the employees worked in the hardware and sales divisions.
  • This is another setback for the beleaguered company during a very rocky 2018.

According to Bloomberg, smartphone maker Essential just terminated about 30 percent of its staff.

An Essential spokesperson confirmed the cuts in an email to Bloomberg. The email said:

“This has been a difficult decision to make. We are very sorry for the impact on our colleagues who are leaving the company and are doing everything we can to help them with their future careers. We are confident that our sharpened product focus will help us deliver a truly game-changing consumer product.”

An anonymous source familiar with the layoffs told Bloomberg the cuts happened primarily among hardware and sales staff.

Essential Phone review: Maximum hardware, minimum software
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This is yet another troubling development for Essential, which has had a very rocky 2018. After sales of the company’s lone smartphone product — the Essential Phone — failed to make waves, the company canceled its plans for a follow-up and reportedly started looking to sell the business off.

However, a recent report suggests Essential has a new product in the works which may or may not be a traditional smartphone. The supposedly AI-centric device will reportedly be very different from anything we’ve previously seen and could make an appearance at CES 2019 in January.

NEXT: There could be a new, incredibly ambitious Essential device shown at CES 2019

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