Ah, that would be why Intex is now licensing the OS, and is planning on releasing at least one Sailfish phone before the end of the year...

Correct! Jolla has never stated that the phone or the tablet are how they plan to make money; their business is centered around Sailfish. The devices they sell may not make much of a profit, but they make an excellent example of Sailfish as a viable alternative operating system. (As I recall, another company did this same thing a long time ago, releasing their alternative OS on a series of devices they called "Nexus" phones...)

Wrong! The devices have succeeded admirably, as (a) cheap advertisement for Jolla (as they do almost pay for themselves), (b) proof that Sailfish is a working alternative to Android/iOS/WP, and (c) a functioning test-bed of devices for Jolla to use to polish and upgrade Sailfish.

At this point, now that they are starting to bring in Sailfish licensees, there's less need to do in-house device creation. It's a perfect time to spin off the hardware department (to allow it to continue to serve the user base they've built up so far), and refocus the main business on licensing Sailfish to new partners.

Ah, yeah, you might want to tell Apple, Samsung, HTC and such about this. For some weird reason, these mobile hardware vendors are making money hand over fist, and have kind of insane stock valuations... In any case, I'd love to see an Android-based OH phone, as I think that would really break open the OH market. It's going to be a while before the world in general switches to Sailfish, but people might snap up Android OHs once they get a look at all the OHs that have been created for the Jolla phone already...

Yup. The phone has pretty much served its purpose, at least w.r.t. what Jolla needed it for...