Essential Products – Andy Rubin's new company and phone

Essential question:

What matters more in a portable computing device (i.e. "phone") the software or the hardware?

Essential seems to be flaunting unique hardware designs, but in fact, it seems that as though without a software stack that's at least as innovative, that this doesn't have any chance of being a success.

If they follow the "luxury watchmaker" pattern, and yet they have a new & unique software platform to enable new functionality, how will they attract the app developers?

There is a bit of a "chicken and the egg" type problem here for sure. I think that in the future there will inevitably be new platforms and new solutions that enable new functionality and attract developers away from existing platforms (as iPhone did), but I don't feel that the time is ripe for this to happen yet.

That said, I wonder if this thing just runs heavily modified stock ASOP?

Original article title is: The Father of Android Is Back, and He’s Built the Anti-iPhone

I posted with a more informative title as "Anti-Phone" seems rather like clickbait.