Jolla Rises from the Ashes With New Focus

[cdmagurus.com]

Jolla today said it has secured new financing and will thus continue operations. The company recently laid off a large percentage of workers after it appeared the funding wouldn't go through. Jolla didn't name its new investors, but said it has secured enough cash to move forward with a somewhat altered business model. "This investment enables the continuation of Sailfish OS development, the community activities, and other company operations," said Jolla co-founder and chairman Antti Saarnio. "It's clear that this recent struggle hit us hard and left some battle wounds, but most importantly this means that the development and life of Sailfish OS will continue strong." Jolla will now focus the bulk of its energy on improving and advancing Sailfish OS, and licensing the platform to hardware makers. Saarnio said good licensing opportunities exist in Russia, India, and China. Jolla will soon determine how best to resolve issues with its tablet. Jolla invested the bulk of the capital generated by crowd-funding efforts in the software, rather than the hardware. This has left Jolla unable to complete the tablet. Jolla wants to take care of its supporters, but hasn't yet figured out how. Jolla firmly believes the world needs an alternate mobile operating system to today's market leaders. "The mobile OS landscape is currently going through a very interesting phase. While many OS projects are fading, the need for alternative OS's is strong," said Saarnio. Sailfish OS is based on Linux, with code pulled from Nokia's discarded Maemo platform. The company, based in Finland, is chiefly composed of former Nokia employees.


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