Jolla has announced that it’s splitting itself into two companies: one that will focus on software and one that’ll be all hardware. Sailfish OS, the Jolla smartphone, and the Jolla Tablet have all been designed and developed in Finland.
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Jolla Ltd is a company born in 2011, “continuing the heritage of Nokia and MeeGo”, made up of creators from the old Nokia business. “A new leader for the Jolla devices business will be appointed during this autumn”. “After three years of intensive Sailfish OS research & development we are now moving full speed to new bigger waters, which requires full focus on software from the team”. Saarnio said that the event will be the place for the company where it will reveal details about its achievements in the recent past, in particular from India and Russian Federation.
Dr. Antti Saarnio, Chairman of Board of Jolla, will lead Jolla Ltd. Dr.Tomi Pienimäki, ex- CEO has been appointed to a new position outside the company, to which he will move in August. Jolla says it hopes to deliver the tablet to backers of its crowdfunding campaign soon.
Sailfish is based a variant of Linux called MeeGo, which Nokia toyed with in devices like the N9 before going whole-hog on Windows Phone backin 2011.
Saarnio went on to say that there is demand for Jolla devices and that, looking ahead, the new hardware company will focus on “security-enhanced devices”.
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The company isn’t saying who’s interested in licensing Sailfish OS, but will be at Mobile World Congress Shanghai later this month to talk about its progress in getting Sailfish in the hands of more users. The company announced “Sailfish Secure” as an enterprise version of Sailfish OS back in March that seems like a close competitor against BlackBerry OS. More exactly, Jolla Ltd. will concentrate only on developing and licensing Sailfish OS, while “after the summer” a brand new company will be established to take care of making and selling devices – including the Jolla Smartphone, the Jolla Tablet, and all future Jolla-branded hardware products.
