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Sailfish mobile system developer Jolla in financial trouble

Xinhua, November 21, 2015 Adjust font size:

Finnish mobile phone and tablet company Jolla on Friday applied for court protected restructuring due to delayed financing arrangements.

Earlier this week, the Helsinki-based company, which had pinned its technological future on the legacy of the last Nokia operating system, announced major layoffs of staff.

Jolla has been developing Sailfish OS operating system for use in mobile phones and tablets. Sailfish is largely based on the Nokia MeeGo system that the Finnish mobile phone giant discarded when it started cooperation with Microsoft and switched to producing Windows phones.

When Jolla was launched in 2011 its personnel comprised mainly former Nokia staffers. The Jolla handset was released in May 2013.

In late 2014, Jolla published the first tablet using the Sailfish OS system, but deliveries of the tablet have been delayed. Earlier this year, Jolla said it would concentrate on producing the operating system and transferring responsibility for production to another company.

The company's chairman Antti Saarnio said in a press release that while the Sailfish OS is now commercially read its development has taken a lot of time and money. The company has to switch to profitable growth and cut back costs.

"Sailfish is valuable and worth fighting for", Saarnio said. He praised the Finnish system of making continued operations possible while restructuring continues. Endit