(GOOD NEWS FROM FINLAND) Finnish startup Jolla is hoping to release a smartphone, which runs on Nokia’s abandoned MeeGo operating system, before the end of the year.
The company is in talks with hardware manufacturers and has already signed deals with several partners.
Made up of former Nokia employees, Jolla was a product of Nokia’s Bridge scheme which aims to help employees leaving Nokia start up new businesses. The 50-strong team consists of a substantial number of MeeGo’s core engineers and directors. CEO Jussi Hurmola was Director of MeeGo Software integration and releases at Nokia, and COO Marc Dillon was Nokia’s principal engineer for the operating system.
Jolla estimates it needs to raids about 10 million euros from private investors and will need to sell 50-100,000 phones to break even. MeeGo was Nokia’s attempt t
o establish an open-source operating system for smartphones. When Nokia decided to adopt Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform for smartphones, MeeGo development was abandoned. It was used in only one commercially introduced Nokia smartphone, the N9, which received good reviews.
