Andy Rubin: From Apple to Essential Products

Essential Phone and Home

Launches the a high-end smartphone and a home assistant device. The new Essential Phone features an edge-to-edge screen, a titanium-and-ceramic case and dual cameras. The Home device will let the user choose between Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri.

Also Read: Android co-founder unveils Essential Phone

New hardware company

He becames a partner in Redpoint Ventures, a venture capital firm which invests in seed, early and growth-stage companies.

He also started a hardware company called Essential with very little information about what the company is actually working on. 

Becomes a venture capitalist

Playground Global, venture fund and design studio was founded by Andy Rubin, Peter Barrett, Matt Hershenson and Bruce Leak and offers support  to startups with engineering, distribution, manufacturing and financing in exchange for equity. In its own words, Playground Global exists for the sole reason of "redifining venture capital for the era of tech industrialists."

Develops Android OS working for Google

Android was acquired by Google. After the acquisition, Rubin became the company's Senior Vice President of Mobile and Digital Content where he oversaw  the development of Android operating system. Rubin has seventeen patents for his inventions.

He also managed the robotics division of Google since December 2013.

Co-creates Android

Android was founded by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White as an operationg system for digital cameras. Later they realised that the market for cameras wasn't big enough and focused their attention on smart handheld devices. Android was acquired by Google in 2005.

Danger Inc

Danger was co-founded by Andy with Matt Hershenson and Joe Britt. The firm provided the Hiptop OS software and back-end services for the device.

Danger Hiptop, branded for T-Mobile as the Sidekick, was a pre-smartphone era device with smartphone like features which include a catalog of downloadable software applications, email hosting, instant messaging, web proxies and a cloud service for the entire personal data on the device. The firm was later acquired by Microsoft in the year 2008.

Engineer at MSN TV

After Magic Cap failure, Andy Rubin joined Artemis Research which was founded by Steve Perlman. It soon became WebTV and was eventually bought by Microsoft. It was renamed MSN TV by Microsoft.

Engineer at General Magic

An Apple spin-off where he was part of the team developing Magic Cap, an operating system and interface for PDAs.

Works at Apple

After working as a robotics engineer for 3 years at Carl Zeiss AG, Andy Rubin worked at Apple as a manufacturing engineer forthe next 3 years.