At Finnish YLE:

Jollan puhelin myyntiin tänään – "Ei tule pärjäämään yksin"
http://yle.fi/uutiset/jollan_puhelin..._yksin/6955214

Rough English translation, you can blame me on translation errors:

Jolla phone on sale today - "Will not do on its own"

Today Jolla launches its first phone and is planning to sell hundreds of thousands of phones during the first year. Now the challenge for a small Finnish company will be the marketing. The company will not stand up on its own.

[intro text for the video] Jolla, founded by ex Nokia people, will bring its first phones to the market. What they look like, and can they challenge? And how the land lies on Finnish phone and mobile know-how? At the Morning TV Jolla's CEO Timo Pienimäki and IT network professor Jukka Manner from Aalto University discussed about the future of Finnish mobile industry. Video: Yle

Wednesday afternoon, history will be made at Narinkkatori, when for a long time there will be a new Finnish mobile phone at the market whose brand is not the familiar Nokia.

At the mobile phone company Jolla's launch event the first 450 preorderers will receive the long-awaited phone on their hands.

After Nokia's final decision last week to sell its phone division Jolla is now on almost the only flag bearer of the domestic phone design.

And the challenge is great.

- So far the challenge for Jolla has been the development, but now the challenge will be finding a market to achieve sales. It is by no means easy field. Faced with the big players like Google, Apple and Microsoft, and there are also newer small companies like Mozilla and Ubuntu coming to the market, research director Jyrki Ali-Yrkkö from the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy ETLA is analyzing.

The small company's goal for this year is to sell twenty thousand phones. Within a year, the target is about two hundred thousand phones.

Initially, the market is Finland, later also Europe and China. With the pursued sales volume Jolla would still be a very small player in a huge market.

Jolla CEO Tomi Pienimäki believes that there is however strength in small size.

- Yes, there is always room for challengers in all markets. It is the law of nature, which applies to all industries. We are a small company and it means our cost structure is very light. This in turn means that we do not, of course, need to achieve impossible large volumes, so that the business will be profitable.

Close Co-operation

Alone, the mobile newcomer is not expected to do well on the brutal markets. These days the major mobile phone companies are investing huge amounts of money on marketing, which is often seen directly on the phone sale volumes. A fledgling firm doesn't have that kind of money in its back pocket.

- Own money for the global marketing budget will not be enough. But through co-operation, for example by having operators involved in the activity, you can succeed, ETLA's Ali-Yrkkö sheds light on.

The cooperation has already begun. For example, the telephone operator DNA has been closely involved in the design of the first phone that will be published today. In its own words, DNA has brought the customer's perspective into the product development of the phone.

- Of course business has always risks, but in this case we have tested the phone and found it to be good. We believe that it has a great potential both in Finland and abroad, the phone business director Cedric Kamtsan from DNA says.

Johan Jaakkola
Yle News