The Future Of Jolla...
 

Jolla has just released their first smartphone and shipping to the market(Finland and EU+Nor and Sch). Jolla has always said that Asia is their main target together with Finland so it would be safe to say that Asia is next.

While they are shipping their own device, their goal is to maintain and develop Sailfish rather than creating their own hardware. That means other manufactures must be in the pipeline to push sailfish devices to the market.

The question is how long the market(and jolla) can wait before pushing new hardware to market. If no new hardware is released before end of 2014 jolla and sailfish is in serious trouble and at that time we will now for sure if sailfish is here to stay or will be abandon or passed to tiny linux os out there.

I would go so far as to say if no new devices is released within 6 month jolla is in trouble. They could of course save some time buy release it for android devices. But even if they grow and get some market share. where is their income?

100 000 devices. 100$ profit/device its 10 million. If they are 100 employees that money won't be enough unless jolla pay its employees with shares or they are significantly underpaid.

And then we have the serious competitors that launching devices everywhere and all the time like androids, windows and iOS. We might have tizen and ubuntu next year. Jolla is a head since they are in market. can they keep the distance.

So what hope do you give jolla and sailfish in this dangerous world?

They should defiantly get credit for doing this bold move and stating a company in this sector with fierce competition. How shall they do it? How can they survive? The winter is coming...

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

I am in the market for good software and will purchase a Sailfish license for 100 Euro if I can install it on a recycled 3 year old Android Nexus device.
Condition is that all relevant open communication (SIP) and network centered protocols (VPN) are integrated and supported and at least a decent browser. (in short, copy N900 and update).
BT hardware supportd, camera's supported, music hardware supported by stable multitasking core applications and that's it.

Provide professional application rights management and administrator level access options to tools starting from file browser, so that ICT people can earn money professionally and safely installing Sailfish based on user's requirements on obsolete Android phones.

Leave flickr and Facebook to 3rd parties until core OS is fully functional and matured.

It is the software that concerns me most. No USB access from PC and so on.. that is worrying me for the moment, not if one or the other slightly different hardware will be released in 6 months.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

I don't get the 6 months logic. They can easily keep selling the same device for over 6 months. Not really sure they have to launch another one in such a short time, at least the competition doesn't do that.

And regarding android, that will depend on HTC or similar to be interested, I doubt anything can be done for the general public with technology as it is.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

I keep seeing folks saying they'd be happy to purchase Sailfish OS for 100€.

100€ is around 138 USD. For 40 USD more, I can get an unlocked, brand new 8GB Motorola Moto G. No way I'm paying 100€ for just an OS on an older Android phone. Just doesn't make sense.

They've differentiated themselves via a different OS (MeeGo based) and with a closed source UI. Fine. They've chatted up a way to install on existing Android phones. Great. I don't see that adding to their numbers because so far, the native apps are far and few in-between and they're slightly (at this moment) dependent on the Android compatibility layer.

That last bit straddles the line of "should I wait for Jolla to be available in my area/market" or "should I get an Android phone instead"... and having an installable OS cost as much as I can get a higher spec'd phone (arguable), then I'm going the higher specification route for slightly more expensive and full-on support.

Jolla needs to discuss not installations, but how will it be supported. And how this adds to their efforts.

Don't get me wrong, Jolla's future is bright if you were to ask me. This whole installable Android part is where I'm sorta misunderstanding what they're trying to attempt.

Future implies waiting. So let's wait and see. The rest is speculation unless it comes from Jolla. That's my take...

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

100€ is around 138 USD. For 40 USD more, I can get an unlocked, brand new 8GB Motorola Moto G. No way I'm paying 100€ for just an OS on an older Android phone. Just doesn't make sense. -->> The Android would not be old anymore as it would run twice as fast and user friendly. That would be worth the investment.
Why are people paying for Windows 8 and not for a decent phone OS is something I am trying to understand. Can you help me out?

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

Whomever stated anything about Windows Phone 8? Don't divert into unnecessary territory.

Does anybody know the version of ACL? It's invariably not 4.4.1. And if anything, Android has shown how closely tied its performance is to the accompanying hardware.

Old or underpowered hardware means slower Android performance.

Your examples don't enforce a good investment. Just a convenient one.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

6 month is a magic marker! it not exactly 6 month but somewhere around that. When everybody that wants the phone got it(or moved on to later products)! at that point price point must decrease and or new or improved products hit the market.

NOTE: I'm not saying they can't or won't or that they will fail if they do so. They might have calculations or plans that included this. What do we know :D

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

You are assuming that people buy a new phone every 6 months. While that may be true to you, it isn't true to everybody. I, for example, buy phones every 2+ years. Most of my mates do so every 1+ years. All fanbois buy phones every time Apple releases one* (so, every 1+ years).

I doubt that there will be dramatic hardware changes in 6 months to justify making a brand new phone. If anything, it will probably be better for Jolla to innovate a lot more [hardware wise] in a year's time. Mind you - I'm talking about a proper differentiating new phone, not what Samsung does with their galaxies which is enhance some bits here and there, change the case slightly and charge a lot more for it.

* Except the last time that they released cheap and expensive products. Fanbois in the "first world" will go for the expensive one of course ;-)

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

I'm not assuming anything like that. Just talking about product life cycle. OF course jolla can sell the same phone for 2 years. But it will be hard for them economically if they don't have some serious backer or work for free. don't you agree...So how should they do it?

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

Good topic, I wanted to discuss this. In this piece of news (in Finnish) Jolla's CEO states that Jolla reaches profitability after 'some' hundreds of thousands of devises. It might be that they profit 150€ per device, or even 200€. I suspect somewhere in between those numbers.

About letting users to install Sailfish on their devices I think is a tactical move with both a long-shot and immediate goal in mind: firstly, to get more native apps (in time), and secondly, to get components cheaper from hardware manufacturers. Installing the OS implies demand, after all. The challenge is to actually make a Jolla device more desirable to get than just to install Sailfish on name-your-android-phone. I think this is where the I2C comes in. But if they do rely I2C on this one, they should really place getting those gadget Other-Halves to market as a priority.

EDIT: Or they rely on to their User Experience and unlike/new-factor to get enough sales for them to sustain themselves. This depends heavily on how many deals they get with European carriers. And they do have a really good marketing team IMO.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

OK - I'm not suggesting that Jolla sells the same device for 2 years, I'm suggesting they do so for a year, which is different, but definitely not as tight as 6 months. I expect them to launch a new device by end of 2014, which kind of matches what they announced already. I also expect them to launch a new device with at least one significant innovation, as opposed to the competition, except maybe Nokia who have always been outstanding in that area.
I'll go as far as to say that they'll even convince me to change my Jolla with a new one in under 2 years, which would be quite new for my behaviour.

Let's remember that they aren't a company with multiple engineering departments. Hell, Apple is and they do roughly a device per year (if not longer), and quite buggy for that matter (the only iThing I recall that wasn't too buggy was the 3G version, the rest had always some fault in the hardware).

EDIT: Thinking about it, if you mean that they'll tease us in 6 months's time with new hardware and deliver it around 6 months later from that, then yeah, bring it on, we are on the same page :-D

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

If you remove the profit made from hardware, where's the future profit from software coming from? There's no "other half" on a standard Android phone. That's the part being overlooked.

I ask these things out of curiosity, not antagonism.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

Alright, I'll ask again - where is the source where Jolla said they'll let users install Sailfish OS on Android devices? My understanding is that they'll persuade hardware manufacturers to switch from Android to Sailfish OS with minimum effort on the hardware that currently runs the former.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

Good point - I'd say that if they do that, they'll monetise on a fraction of their innovations, while not trashing them altogether, as you can always buy a current or future Jolla phone. Diversity is not always bad, so long as you convince your investors that you have a plan for everything and that you have some margin to take a hit on bad ideas.

Profit from harware would be lincensing, of course, which is probably less than hardware+software.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

I'll dig the news from somewhere, but if I remember right they said they were only going to offer that in the Asian market where it's already popular. Also they didn't say anothing definite, ie plans may change.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

That would make sense, I can't really comment as I don't know what the consumer law is like in Asia in general. In Europe (or the western world for that matter), I'd be worried about what happens if Normal Joe bricks their device because they made a mistake flashing it with an inappropriate image of Sailfish OS. And this is exactly why I'm saying that technology is not ready for users to install whatever they want in their smartphones. It is hardly ready in the PC market, and yet most people don't know how to do it ;-)

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

We have a profofconcept/development alpha version of sailfishoson n9 done by few great people in the community. But it take alot of time getting everything up and working so I do not expect it to be as stable as Harmattan for several reasons. But definitivly cool project.

But funny is when people expect Jolla, as company, port sailfishos for just 100EUR to a three year old AndroidHW and make it stable/fully working?

Now seriously? Do people realize how much time and resources it take to make an OS stable? Its not something that can be done in 8hours by one fully working engineer...

If you want it on a three year old HW i recomend you ask the android community for help instead. And maybe you get an alpha up running in some weeks.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

Found the original news source.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

Right, so they won't connect directly with users then, they'll do it through one of the websites that provide the service, which makes sense. They won't even sell the OS.

Like mikecomputing suggests, however, it will be a lot of work to "make sure that Sailfish will run on different kind of Android devices.”, like Tomi says. Bring on the hardware compatibility matrix and all that.

I hope Jolla finds a way to deal with customer expectations, feedback, etc. long before six months. Maybe more important than new models.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

I am 99 % sure that i have seen a news article where someone from Jolla says that they are developing a new phone and it should come sometime in the second half of 2014. But I can't find anywhere that article.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

With the proper driver support from hardware manufacturers that OS porting is not too much hassle for a team that has already a stable OS running.
They are supposed to be a little bit more resourceful than a 1 man hobby team reverse engineering software drivers.

My 2008 PC has plenty of choices of OS and hence feels like the best hardware investment ever, leaving me a gigantic budget for software compared to the 90's where we had to upgrade our hardware for 1000+ world currencies with every new software release.

The only reasons why technological marvels like a Galaxy Note that sport plenty of RAM will be retired and recycled too soon is because the built in obsolesce of only running Android.
Somebody needs to open up that sleeping hardware on a big scale.

There lies the future for Jolla.

Yes I am prepared to pay 100 world currency for that even more.

As for those hardware vendors that rely on free Android, sorry but we all knew that story was not going to last forever (pissing in your pants too cool down while stubbornly standing on a burning platform) Do we really have to feel sorry for Samsung? They will just go on and sell microwaves or x-ray machines or whatever they do.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

In this comment I read it first - including source:

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

Sounds good.

1. Squeeze out all possible devices until June
2. Lower prices to 250 Euro in June
3. Announce new device august
4. Present the device October
5. Launch and kick off 1 December

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

You do know that usually if someone in marketing says first half it means 31th of Jun 23:59, and second half means 31 of Dec 23:59.
Its just the optimistic end users that think it means 1st of Jan and 1st of Jul. Generally speaking of course.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

Naturally ;)

(It is true though)

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

see if they dont release a keyboard other half am tempted to just get a nexus 5 and whack on sailfish if it had either A. half decent android support till native apps kick off, or B. just enough important apps. id rather see jolla waste there time making applications for there phone than porting there os to several phones. since there phone to me is sexy as phuck

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

Some benchmark result posted around here suggested runtime version 4.1.1 or 4.2.1 IIRC

Which is moot, as I don't think the ACL would come together with the installable sailfish, just as it isn't available for the N9.

Nobody talked about Windows Phone 8. Ste-phan compared the desktop OS situation (millions of people pay for Windows 8) so it shouldn't be thought as outrageous to pay for a phone OS.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

If anyone from Jolla reading this...please have your future launch parties Fridays so people have bigger chance to attend.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

...and in summer.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

I think that it would be a good opportunity for developers to port Sailfish to Android devices. The folks that set up a Jelly Bean image to install on the Nook tablet did a nice job. Much better than the Nooks android OS. Of course, you could now download any app from google play using the Jelly Bean OS- which was not allowed on the Nook OS at the time. They charged about $30 to do it. Basically you would boot up Jellybean from a micro sd and you could choose which OS you wanted to use. Here is a link.

https://www.n2acards.com/

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

We would have had launch party in summer if the phone would have launched in time.
Lets hope summer released happens for this possible second phone.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

The timelines in this thread are unrealistic... even given the relationships that Jolla has already made public. Future for them means they are 2 steps ahead, and one of those steps has nothing to do with a device.

Licensing
- can work for SailfishOS if they do something that integrates TOH; pretty much is nothing more than a RedHat for Mobile if they went without it
- has limited usefulness in a Cyogenmod like capacity - giving existing Android owners a path to a different UX. Makes more sense to pitch that as an option to Android OEMs who are part of the Open Handset Alliance - those who are can't do use this without breaking that agreement
- has potential usages in automotive and other verticals where the security of Android is questioned or, the flexibility of other embedded platforms has diminished where more is needed but there's in-house ability to manage from there

Devices
- the second phone is already locked-in in terms of specs; that is, unless Jolla is using one of those really nice companies who have folks who see rumored images and pump out a working mobile in less than 3 months (there are a few).
- there's likely a workstation-like device in the plans, and probably a piece of wearable tech; there are holes in these avenues, primarily in respect to how the unique IP of Jolla (TOH, customization, etc) makes sense with these; that said, I'd pay attention to their experiments more than their communication

Future
- there are more questions than answers only because we are looking at what's been done before, and asking when Jolla will do the same. If their modus operandi (#unlike) were to be taken literally, I'd look at not how their platform enables the niche open source actions, but how it disrupts the pace of development and the responses to regional consumer opportunities... in plain language, watch their shoulders, not their legs.
- watch how niche open source developers help Jolla make a wave forward in development tools. I'd like to say I see Jolla bringing a few along with them, without acquisition. Tizen's action will influence this space too. If Tizen enables bigger reach with as much work, Jolla will have to parlay #unlike as more than just niche passion
- I don't know that it will matter for more than the next 12mos about Android compatibility if they can make the native apps argument. That said, Google's change to ART will help Jolla's position. The more of the Android experience that gets tied to the Play Store, the more likely the Open Handset Alliance looks like Google and the Disciples.

Those are my thoughts so far. But, hey, what do I know ;)

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

Jolla is too small of an entity to pump (tens of) millions of phones into markets; and from what we know, they don't have the investments to run as is for x years. Nor do they have the cash for multinational marketing campaigns to build demand.

Considering all of this, I would suspect the actual Jolla Phone to be sort of a Nexus-like device - not in specs, but as a vanilla flagship for what can be done by others. Sell several thousand to the rabid followers. Produce one per year as the OS and Other Half possibilities mature. As mentioned, the proof of concept phone.

The play then is to have manufacturers and/or carriers license Sailfish and produce the devices, and distribute them. This is the only way I can see Jolla surviving.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

Thanks for the correction - hmm, this was moved to OT?

Anyway, biggest reason why folks (read: companies) purchased Windows 8 was mainly because of Microsoft Office. As a prior NeoOffice/J user (OS X), I can tell you that its compatibility mode isn't perfect with the Windows users. Not at all.

In my house, it's either OS X or Linux. I run Windows only via VM.

But I will say this... it's due time we start treating our phones like our computers. Let's put on there what we damn well please. Sailfish accomplishes this before the others, they might be onto something.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

Intressting question. Why when will jolla star selling their device on the Web.?

Do they serve all current preorders before they can decided on another batch or will they don't seel the device anymore and instead have another device ready for presentation Soon.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

Here's the worst case scenario:

1. The jolla phone sells, but not enough to support 80 employees
2. Jolla move away from hardware and enable sailfish to run on android.
3. sailfish appears in google app/play store as a download for $5
4. jolla's main competitor ends up being the guys who write android launcher plus pro (or whatever)
5. everybody learns a valuable lesson. whatever that is.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

That's not the worst I can think of any way lets hope it won't happen anyway

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

Report: Windows Phone, Windows RT May be Offered Free to OEMs

http://www.dailytech.com/Report+Wind...ticle33911.htm

I guess this would affect Jolla's plans to license sailfish to OEMs.

Re: The Future Of Jolla...
 

It will definitely be harder in 1 year than now so if jolla will find any partners it must be now.