A group of ex-Nokia employees who quit over the company's decision to abandon the planned MeeGo operating system in favour of Windows launched their own smartphone on Monday, hoping it will be a strong rival for other big names in the market.
Well, named The Jolla, it is a smartphone which is entirely intuitive and has no buttons. The model has a 4.5-inch touch screen and features two different-coloured halves that together make up the phone. It runs its own operating system called Sailfish OS, a successor to MeeGo and which is compatible with some Android applications.
The company is offering Sailfish products to retailer and operator partners for the medium-price range.
According to Marc Dillon, head of Sailfish development, existing operating systems "do not really support a great deal of flexibility. One (iOS) is completely closed and one (Android) pushes its own services pretty heavily." "I see that Sailfish will be used on lots of different devices from other manufacturers as well. We have a constant stream of interest," he told AFP.
Dillon said he would be "very happy with one million sold devices in one year."
Jolla hopes to take on markets in China, Europe and North Africa, but not the United States.
Smartphone operating systems are dominated by Google's Android and Apple's iOS. Jolla's Sailfish, like Microsoft's Windows and Mozilla's Firefox, are trying to break their dominance on the market.
Jolla has already signed two distribution deals, with the largest smartphone retailer in China, D Phone, and the Finnish operator DNA. The Sailfish OS will also run on tablets.
Jolla, which counts four former Nokia engineers and directors among its five founders, was started in 2011 and now has some 70 employees. Let's see if this can pose a threat to the major names in the smartphones market.
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