What that means to Essential's bottom line is not clear. It would be difficult to even consider the assumption of the revenue of $44M for them.
My personal experience is a polar opposite of this.
I myself worked with few companies doing private label handsets. It is a near foolproof business.
You go to an ODM, put money first for a respin of a successful product under your brand, then you dump the batch on TaoBao, Aliexpress, and trade companies. This will stably gain you profits in single digits, and at about %15 if you have some luck along with real insight into doing things like that.
Should Andy be more easy on pricing, and also "simply dump the product off an online marketplace," he would've been in black by now.
> The phone’s initial price was $699, the same as an iPhone viewed as a competitor. At that price, the company sold as few as 20,000 units across its website and third-party distribution partners, one of the people said. Last October, Essential lowered the price by $200, which boosted sales. The company has sold at least 150,000 to date, according to the person familiar with the company.
So that's 20,000 * $699 + 150,000 * $499 ~ $89M
Except it isn't. Many were sold at heavy discount.