The former team of Nokia engineers and designers that, upon the company’s dissolution created Jolla, is breaking its company into two.
Jolla Ltd., the former whole, will focus on licensing and development of Sailfish OS, the software that runs the upcoming Jolla Tablet.
That tablet, which raised over $2.5 million on crowdfunding site Indiegogo earlier this year, will run the in-development Sailfish OS when it is released. So why split the company in two? Because sourcing components for the hardware has slowed down the development of the software.
“The software (Sailfish OS) part of the work is in good shape but we have been slowed down by supply issues of certain hardware components,” said Dr. Antti Saarnio, Jolla’s board chairman. “We expect to solve this issue very soon.”
Saarnio will head up the company’s software development and work with other board members to find a head of the devices division later this year. “Every young company has to find its clear focus at some time, and for Jolla that time is now. We have huge opportunities in the Sailfish OS licensing business, and I am very proud and excited to take responsibility of steering the Jolla ship to a new commercial phase. 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,” he continued.
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. Because it is Linux-based, it can run Android apps in a wrapper, similar to the way BlackBerry 10 does it today. Sailfish OS focuses on gestures and ease of use, while maintaining legacy app compatibility through the Qt development language.
