Jolla

This article is about the company. For the operating system by Jolla, see Sailfish OS. For the alliance gathering Sailfish OS partners, see Sailfish Alliance. For other uses, see Jolla (disambiguation).

Jolla Oy

Company type	Private
Industry	Mobile devices, Consumer Electronics/Devices
Founded	Pirkkala, Finland (March 29, 2011 (2011-03-29))
Founder	Sami Pienimäki Jussi Hurmola Marc Dillon Stefano Mosconi Antti Saarnio
Headquarters	Helsinki , Finland
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Antti Saarnio (Chairman & Finance) Tomi Pienimäki (CEO) Marc Dillon (Head of Software Development) Sami Pienimäki (VP of Sales & Business Development) Stefano Mosconi (CIO) Jussi Hurmola (Sailfish strategy) Alberto Martinez (Partnership Coordinator)
Products	Smartphones with Linux-based Sailfish OS continuing the previous work of the MeeGo project
Number of employees	150 developers
Website	Jolla.com

Alternative logo

Jolla Oy (sometimes referred to as Jolla Ltd.) is an independent designer and developer of various mobile devices and open Sailfish OS based on MeeGo and Mer Core open source projects. In addition to its headquarters in Helsinki, Finland, R&D sites in Helsinki and Tampere, has offices in Hong Kong and is establishing R&D operations in China mainland in order to lead the Sailfish Alliance development and ecosystem. The first product is their Jolla smartphone, which is running the Sailfish OS based on the core distribution of the Mer project, which continues the previous work of the MeeGo project.

Jolla, in Finnish, is pronounced 'yolla'.

History

Nokia, after rapidly losing marketshare in the smartphone market, needed an alternative operating system to Symbian and chose to create a new one based on Linux called Maemo. This evolved into the MeeGo project as the result of a merger with Intel's Moblin project, also an open source Linux system. Nokia, after the burning platform memo from Stephen Elopon 7th February 2011 , chose to concentrate on Windows Phone for the high-end smartphones and later stopped development of their MeeGo-based handsets.

MeeGo, hosted by the Linux Foundation, is no longer actively developed. The Mer project was created as a completely free alternative to Maemo and was forked and updated to reconstruct MeeGo with the aim of establishing a governance based on meritocracy. The Mer project has no default UI, concentrating on the core operating system components for others to build upon.

After Nokia closed the MeeGo project, many of the team were made redundant or otherwise left and formed Jolla in October 2011, with some funding from Nokia's "Bridge" programme which helps establish and support new start-up companies formed by ex-Nokia employees. Jolla continues the work started by Nokia's MeeGo team which debuted in the Nokia N9.

Under the Nokia Bridge programme and during the creation of Jolla, its founders discussed their plans. Nokia paid employees leaving the company €25,000, but despite initial rumours, had not gifted any rights to patents or other intellectual property to Jolla. While Jolla's Sailfish OS can be considered a direct successor of Nokia & Intel's MeeGo and the N9 mobile phone, it can base its software only on the open-sourced components of MeeGo, with the closed-source user interface design for a future devices being developed from the scratch.

Sailfish

Jolla went public on the 6th July 2012 when it announced it intention to develop and market new smartphones new gesture-oriented user interface and named their operating system "Sailfish". Jolla's Sailfish OS is an instance of Mer and includes a gesture-based user interface developed using the Qt, QML and HTML5, as did Nokia's N9.

An application ecosystem is an area that Nokia's MeeGo and Symbian phones were weak compared to iOS and Android. Jolla hopes to co-operate with others to grow the ecosystem. Jolla announced on the 17th September 2013 that the Jolla phone will be capable of running most Android applications, though without direct access to the Google Play Store.

Location

The company headquarters are in Ruoholahti, Helsinki with an R&D office in Tampere. Jolla has an R&D department and office in the Hong Kong Cyberport.

Products

First unveiled device, the product prototype

Marc Dillon showing the Jolla's phone. The event was titled Jolla Love Day at KlausK, Helsinki.

People waiting to get hands on with Jolla's phone.

Jolla's mobile phone

Specifications of the first device

On the 20th of May 2013, Jolla unveiled the details and design of their first device. The unveiling came after the internet marketing campaign #IamTheOtherHalf . The following details of the device have been released so far:

• Original Jolla design with ample Estrade display
• 4.5” IPS qHD (960×540) 5-point multi-touch display protected with Gorilla Glass 2
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 1.4 GHz dual core processor (Model 8930AA)
• GSM, 3G, 4G connection (said to be working on 6 continents, hence supposed pentaband)
• MicroSIM format
• 1 GB RAM
• 16 GB (of internal storage memory)
• microSD slot (supported cards not announced yet)
• WLAN 802.11 b/g/n 2.4 GHz
• Bluetooth 4.0 EDR HS
• AGPS & GLONASS
• USB2.0 HS
• 8 MP AF camera with LED flash, 2 MP front camera
• User-replaceable battery (2100mAh; 3,8V; 7,98Wh) with Talk time of approx. 7.7(GSM)/5.5(3G) hrs. and a stand-by time of approx. 500 hrs. (video playback and music playback approx. time unknown)
• sensors: proximity, accelerometer, gyro, e-compass, ambient light.
• The Other Half, the exchangeable back cover of the phone, increasing expandability through changeable "smart covers". Changing the cover can influence aspects like the UI or performance, as well as enabling hard- and software replacement. The covers connect with the main module through NFC, an I²C bus and IN/OUT power connector. It is also supposed to represent the conception of the Jolla opensource philosophy where the other half is the user, interacting with a device.
• Buttonless display with gesture based Sailfish OS
• Android application compliance
• Standard MicroUSB port for connectivity and charging
• RGB indicator LED
• dual-microphone for noise cancellation
• 3.5 mm 4-pin audio jack port (for headphones, but it is known that other usage is also possible)
• Dimensions: H131 x W68 x D9,9 mm
• Weight: 141g
• Device in English language version (at first, localizations and languages will be added when adding markets)

The Other Half

The replaceable back cover, known as The Other Half, not only changes the appearance of the phone but, through a tag embedded in the cover, prompts to change the ambience settings to match. Covers are also intended to be able to be extend the phone's capabilities such as including extra software or adding a QWERTY keyboard. Below the cover, contacts are exposed for power and an ²C bus.

Marketing and promotion

The first phones will ship through DNA on the 27th November 2013 and pre-ordered devices will be sent, shortly thereafter the product will be available online directly from Jolla.

After an internet marketing campaign titled #IamTheOtherHalf came the unveiling event on 20 May 2013, #JollaLoveDay, for Jolla's first device. Jolla launched with just a pre-order campaign, aimed at Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, France and Italy. The campaign has been responded with demand from 136 countries via internet and 100% pre-orders has been sold out in 3 months, by 21 August 2013.

Ecosystem

Jolla Harbour for submitting Sailfish and Android applications to the Jolla Store

The first element of the ecosystem is the Jolla Harbour (harbour.jolla.com) devoted for submitting applications to the Jolla Store, where one can submit and manage one's applications. Consumers are able to install available software directly from their Jolla smartphones.

Software can be submitted on free basis, both Sailfish OS or Android OS applications to Jolla Harbour. The submission process is the same for Android developers and Sailfish developers, in both cases.

There are binary package naming guidelines for uploading files. Developers are to provide metadata:

• An app icon for the Store (86x86px, png)
• 1-3 screenshots (540x960px, png or jpg)
• An optional Cover image for developer's Store page (516x252px, png or jpg)

After submission an application to Jolla Harbour, so the metadata and the binary and required images, Jolla performs Quality Assurance testing on real Jolla devices, then gets back with feedback of QA results within undefined "a few days" via the email address registered to Jolla account.

At launch, the Jolla Harbour and Jolla Store support only free applications. The works to enable payment solutions are in progress and these capabilities are to be published as they develop.

At the beginning of November 2013 it was launched but not fully operational as still under construction, so it is in advanced public betatesting, but not the full performance. It allows developers and users to test portal performance with free applications and Jolla to correct issues reported by users to avoid the shame of non-working properly store known generally from former mobiles vendor. That is also fulfilling of the one of the main demands from both customers and developers: the correct performance of searching & downloading & charging for customers, of publishing & managing & paying for developers.

During the first days after launch at 6 November 2013 number of interested in exceeded expectations and hardware abilities. There were so many demands that the server was overloaded and access to the Jolla Harbour portal website was impossible.

Software

Upon Jolla's declarations that Sailfish OS is be able to use software from following platforms

• Sailfish (natively created + ported like from Qt, Symbian, MeeGo - several developers have reported that porting a Qt written software with Sailfish SDK takes a few hours only, so porting from Symbian or MeeGo expands revenue source easily)
• MeeGo (because of backward compatibility thanks to MeeGo code legacy included in the Mer core)
• Android (using built-in Alien Dalvik by Myriad Group, which will allow to use most applications like a native android device.)
• Unix and Linux (as Sailfish is Linux then using such a software is possible, especially RPM packages, either in terminal/console mode or with limitations implying from using Sailfish UI, if not ported and adjusted)
• HTML5

Number of all kinds applications available for Jolla exceeded 600 thousands unique positions in 2013.

Hardware

Hardware components are widely adapted on Sailfish and this should make it possible to bring very strong hardware. When the ST-Ericsson has joined the Sailfish Alliance a wide support with NovaThor hardware platform was declared.

Jolla hardware was shown end of May 2013 and went on sale on 27 November 2013. It is a smartphone with an Ample 4.5" IPS qHD display, 16GB storage, 1GB RAM, a MicroSD slot and a 8MP camera. It is also being sold by the operator DNA in Finland since beginning of December.

Jolla's Sailfish OS also has been fully operational on 23-inch screen of Acer T231H when launched on Dell notebook.

Jolla's Sailfish OS works in a tablet too. About tablet in November 2012 it was said that we could see Sailfish tablet, but Jolla itself will on this first wave concentrate on a smartphone. Sailfish has been presented on devices like:

• Acer Iconia tab W500
• O2 Joggler
• Exopc.

Because of open source nature and characteristics (especially used virtual box) of Sailfish SDK there is no need to establish any particular device as the development reference machine. However the Sailfish OS has been presented at first with Nokia N950 and Nokia N9 devices, it also was launch on several various devices like e.g.: the Iconia tab W500 an x86 tablet among others.

Terminology

Jolla, the company name, means dinghy (a small agile boat) in Finnish. It can also be recognized as an ironic joke about the "burning platform memo" which "accidentally leaked" from Nokia CEO Stephen Elop in February 2011.

External links

• Official website
• Sailfish Smartphone blog
• Jolla smartfon prototype and Sailfish OS presentation by Chief Designer Martin Schüle, 2013
• Sailfish OS wiki - almost everything about the Sailfish OS and related subjects
• FAQ about Jolla & Sailfish OS