Welcome Jolla - Birth of newest smartphone maker - onto the MeeGo platform (by Ex Nokia Execs)

Last weekend the story broke about Jolla. In that nightmare of bad news that has been the Nokia saga this past 15 months or so, one profit warning after another, mass layoffs and market share collapse, something beautiful is arising from the ashes.

Nokia had set up a very considerate way to deal with departing (mostly fired) Nokia employees. Nokia tried to help them secure their next job. In some case vast numbers of them went to another employer directly, to continue the same work, such as the Symbian developers in the thousands that were moved to work for Accenture. Another novel way was for Nokia to encourage small teams, up to 4 Nokia departing staff, to set up new start-ups in this digital space. They did not get a Nokia ownership stake, but rather just a guaranteed loan. Not big, but 25,000 Euros per person so get four pals together, you have 100,000 Euros to help start up your new venture. And one of those ventures that started already late last year, is Jolla.

Jolla means 'dinghy' ie small boat, in Finnish (and a particularly delightful meaning in Finland is that one of the most, perhaps the most known usages of 'jolla' is in relation to 'optimisti jolla' a one-person tiny sailboat on which many of us learn to sail. The Optimist dinghly. The optimist sailboat. isn't that a wonderful meaning considering the vast oceans of opportunity in digital.) Haha, especially considering some were convinced to jump off a 'burning' platform into the freezing seas. These Nokia execs were the true optimists, they were given lemons, they made lemonade. They set up a little boat to pick up some of the people plunging from the vast Nokia platforms into the deadly seas, and rescued them...

Jolla is 50 employees strong already, and the staff all come from Nokia's smartphones space, almost all around the MeeGo and its predeceessor Maemo OS, ie these are working on Linux based open source based smartphones - not unlike Android (but distinctly different) and similar to the upcoming Samsung Tizen. MeeGo itself is owned by Nokia and Intel, and its not quite certain what the exact platforms will be that Jolla will launch on, they talk of a new branch of the Linux OS tree called Mer (in some langauges, 'sea' - how appropriate). I am not yet familiar exactly how Mer relates to Jolla and to MeeGo.

UPDATE - only moments after I posted this, the third person to post a comment was David Greaves (thanks David!) with this link with more info about Mer.

Also there also was some rather vague buzz in the Finnish media that Nokia may have transferred some patents or perhaps the licensing of some patents to some startups, perhaps also to Jolla, I do not yet know. Now that I checked the IT Viikko story, they have updated it to indicate that they were mistaken initially to report some patents to have been transferred. So lets take this as having been a wild rumor.. 

Nonetheless, Jolla will take the Nokia knowhow that produced the astonishing N9 and its sister the N950 and its predecssor N900 - and build on this knowhow to produce something new in the smartphones/digital gadgets space. I was not quite sure if they meant something in the phablets space or what, but roughly speaking, if you liked the N9, perhaps wanted one, or wanted to see what would Nokia do next - this Jolla team is effectively the next edition, the Version 2.0 for the N9 and N950 project. And remember, the N9 had such mild reviews as being called the 'Godphone' to the iPhone being the Jesusphone. And winning the 'design Oscars' ie the D&AD Awards ahead of such weak contenders as .. the iPad 2.

The knowhow here is incredible.The MeeGo platform itself is not necessarily big, but might easily have parallels and synergies with Android and Tizen. This is one company you want to keep your eyes on. The leadership is Dr Antti Saarnio as Chairman, Jussi Hurmola as CEO, Sami Pienimaki as VP Sales, Stefano Mosconi CIO and Marc Dillon as COO. The company is headquartered in Tampere very near the small town of Nokia where Nokia pulp, paper and rubber company originally came from and where today's Nokia got its name. So this is also very much truly at the 'roots' of Nokia and the staff make very clear they are very friendly with Nokia, this is not a hostile young start-up of departed execs intending to destroy its larger older rival haha..

The story of Jolla is now spreading very broadly like Forbes covering them already. One of best stories so far with more detailed info is at Finnish tech mag IT Viikko (in Finnish). I asked my Twitter followers if any Finnish blogger could translate the highlights, and my friend Chris Peake ie @creip at his blog Peak Mobility did that for you (thanks Chris!)

If you are media/press looking for exciting positive stories in the Nokia carnage, then Jolla has every chance to be a new tech start-up story from Finland, and could soon become as bright as say Rovio (Angry Birds) is today or Sulake (Habbo Hotel) was earlier in the [ast decade. Please report on Jolla and follow their career.

If you are an investor looking for Tomi's particular insights into what is below the radar and can become mightly big soon, like say my stories here of Flirtomatic or Layar or BookIt or Qustodian in the past, here is another very strong early stage startup in mobile, someone whose pedigree is platinum and whose management team is titanium. This is one handset maker, smartphone maker, who seems like a very promising investment. Please consider them and contact them if you have an interest in joining their growth adventure.

Jolla is so fresh, they don't even have a website yet. You can follow their tweets as @jollamobile and they have a Linked In page as Jolla. I hereby openly pledge my support for the full team of Jolla, this is a beautiful flower growing from the bigger economic distress that happened at Nokia. Now grab the oars, start rowing. Raise the little sail, Lets have Jolla lead us onto the new digital sea of Mer and bring us magnificent smartphones soon. Tsemppia Jollalaiset! I am with you!

Comments

[Dipankar Mitra]

Jolla is indeed great news, and frankly I'm pleasantly surprised that Elop allowed this. I'm waiting for the next bit of good news when they launch the first Jolla smartphone which will definitely be my next phone.

[Afewgoodmen]

Let's see what Jolla would hatch up. If the products is as refreshing as the N9, then we truly have a winner in our hands!

[David Greaves / lbt]

wrt : "not quite certain what the exact platforms will be that Jolla will launch on, they talk of a new branch of the Linux OS tree called Mer"

http://www.merproject.org/ has some history on Mer. For the exploratory amongst you this includes some links to analysis of what we felt MeeGo could have done better.

Given a world as sharing as opensource there's a degree of fluidity and collaboration. So whilst Jolla *is* "MeeGo-based" (and that's important for the market which would miss the subtleties) Jolla have tweeted that it is actually built on Mer, an evolutionary project that continues the vision of MeeGo more than the "brand" of MeeGo.

[Henri Bergius]

Mer was originally "Maemo Reconstructed", a community-lead fully open source version of Nokia's Maemo. That original effort was discontinued when MeeGo seemed to deliver the same promises: http://mer-project.blogspot.de/2010/02/mer-project-just-bunch-of-redshirts.html

When MeeGo was discontinued by Intel, the Mer team again picked it up, and are carrying the MeeGo dream forward: http://lists.meego.com/pipermail/meego-dev/2011-October/484215.html

I've written about this an more in my "The Dreams of the MeeGo Diaspora" post last weekend: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/meego-diaspora/

[bl0wf1sh]

All the best for the Jolla team! Let's see what they can achieve :)

In the meantime, should also mention, that "Mär" means "fairy tale" in German (and is equivalent to one of the possible pronunciations of "Mer" I find).

[Stefan Constantinescu]

I talked to the CEO earlier today. Recorded the interview and transcribed it.

http://www.intomobile.com/2012/07/11/interview-jussi-hurmola-ceo-jollamobile-audio-and-text-available/

[vladkr]

That's promising :)

I hope their smartphones will be made in Finland, but if Jolla guys go to China every month, I suppose they won't.

Anyway, it's not clear yet how we can support them.

[Joulutonttu]

CEO Jussi Hurmola said this morning on Huomenta Suomi, Finnish morning tv that they examined if it is possible to make phones in Finland, but the OEMs are in China nowadays.

But we are very proud of Finnish software engineering still!

Good luck, Jolla!

[vladkr]

Thank you Joulutonttu for the information.

It may seem futile to consider the "Made in Finland" sticker as imported, but it really is to me, and I'm always keen on buying made in Finland stuff (R-Collection, Marimekko, Fiskars, Nokia, Nokian Renkat/Jalkineet...), even if it's sometimes more expensive and/or hard to get.

So, I'm ready to replace my N9 - although it's still quite recent - with a Finnish-made Jolla.

If you allow me a bad wordplay : Yalla Jolla !

[vladkr]

"Made in Finland" sticker as importANT, not "imported"
Sorry for the typo

[Cke]

Spinning out a small product group to do innovation outside of an ossified big corporation is a time tested way to go. When they make good, the parent company will buy them back. It has happened in Seattle many times with MSFT spinoffs. Good luck!

[Adam]

My greatest appreciation to the Jolla developers. I am sending a song of Sergio Endrigo to them the "l'arca di Noe" "Ark of Noe" (almost about Jolla and Mer) bringing the true ones to the successful future. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT5wNK-mzvw

[Ninvestor]

Looking for another way to take the other side of the news/trade - any ideas of how to short this? I smell a money maker being on the other side.

[elm70]

I can't congratulate with the people in Jolla

Timo, you are fighting since over 1 year for show what if it is not a crime is a total bad management in Nokia

No, I don't appreciate people that use 25k euro from Nokia for be a competitor of Nokia
Like I don't appreciate that Finns and government in Finland did nothing to protect Nokia from a total moron or a mayor criminal

Tchuss

E_lm_70

[JD!]

Nokia should transfer support of N9 software to Jolla. That way, people will get bugs sorted out and also Jolla can be able to relase Next version of N9 with Nokia... Just in case Win 8 phones f*cked up the whole company!

[zlutor]

@JD!: So, Nokia should finance its wannabe competitor? :-) Giving full access to the source code, etc?

On the other hand I, as N9 user, would welcome it, of course...

[Oliver]

I have been praying for something like this to happen.
Despite the fact there exist lots of Manufactures peddling a variety of options, I still believe the void created by Nokia's implosion can not be filled by any American or Asian manufacturer. There has always been something personal about Nokia and the way the devices are made.
I hope this new start up can continue with the high quality and with a better focus.

[AtTheBottomOfTheHilton]

Does anybody know who the investors are. According to the interview with the CEO they hired 5 per week. You can't hire 5 persons a week unless you have an investor with very deep pockets and also that they believe in this business. Who is it? Is it Nokia themselves, feeling guilty firing all these people?

[ylioptimistijollako?]

How the h**l some little start-up can launch 2 phones only in 6-9 months when much bigger companies waste ~18 months building one phone?

[BeRealistic]

Most of the disappointment, anger and frustration about Nokia seems to be simply and magically translating into high hopes and unrealistic expectations about Jolla.

This is too naive on the part of even a leading analyst like you, Tommy!! Lets be grounded. What chances do Jolla have to create a new alternative, unless, unless, they find a big sponsor with deep pockets and long hands,in next six months.

Lets keep emotions and patriotism apart and compare Jolla with many of the other similar Mobile OS /smart phone efforts going on around the world. (I am a FinN)