https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/22/16516828/essential-phone-price-cut-499-android

Essential is slashing the price of its eponymous phone, down to $499 at its website. That’s a $200 price cut from the original $699 price, less than two months after it began shipping to customers. There is really no other way to read the move except as a signal that it wasn’t selling well at $699 — especially given that the only US carrier stores it’s available in have “Sprint” above the door. It certainly doesn’t help that it now has to face the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL head-to-head.

Of course, that’s not how Essential sees it, saying that the price drop is there in lieu of “a massive TV campaign to capture your attention,” which is hard not to see as a wry Google and Apple dig. “We think making it easier for people to get their hands on our first products is a better way to get to know us,” the company’s blog post adds.