[zrgiu_]

I may be biased here, but I think almost everyone here is missing the point. Yes, Essential raised $300M because Andy Rubin is at the helm, but the bet is not on the phone they just launched. Its on the Smart Home. Here's a quote from Rubin himself:

    The long-term vision for Essential, Rubin said, is more closely aligned 
    with the Essential Home, which Rubin hopes you’ll put in your kitchen or 
    living room and use to control all the connected devices where you live.

Apple has HomeKit, Google has "works with Nest" (a joke, really), Samsung has SmartThings, etc.. If he follows the same path he has with Android and decides to open up the Essential Home platform [1], then its going to revolutionize a market that has the potential of being as valuable as the smartphone. If that's not a company that's worth $1B, especially led by someone with Andy Rubin's track record, I don't know what is.

[1] I mean truly open, the way he's done with Android. The Essential phone will already be more open that most phones on the market (unlocked bootloader), there's good reason to believe the Home will be too.

[mankash666]

" If that's not a company that's worth $1B, especially led by someone with Andy Rubin's track record, I don't know what is."

With all due respect, there's zero justification in your statement for the $1B valuation. There is bias, of the favorable kind, towards Andy, nothing objective.

Remember that the open market doesn't trade on pure emotion/bias only. Otherwise, many statements like yours could've saved Lehman Brothers from hitting $0 in value

[twakefield]

That's good perspective. My followup question is: why build the phone, then...because it's the remote control?

[builtinbuffalo]

He needs to show something tangible to investors and the world. He's a phone guy, so he starts here, knowing voice assistants are still a few years away from mainstream. That'll give him a customer base and some revenue, keeping investors off his back which extends his timeline as the voice assistant / smart home market develops over next five to ten years.

[remir]

At the Code conference, Andy said that Ambiant OS will be open source.