I called my credit card company on Friday to try to dispute the charge to IndieGoGo.

"So you're looking to dispute a charge from a year and a day ago?"

Pretty sure that was futile, but I had to try.

As stated previously, closure. Now I will go to Micro Center to receive retail therapy.

Based on Jolla's communications thus far:
- Jolla is out of cash
- Tablets have not been ordered from the manufacturer as Jolla doesn't have cash to pay for them
- All the personnel will be temporarily laid off as Jolla doesn't have cash to pay their salaries

What is needed is funding from an investor. If finding an investor was difficult, it is even more difficult now as Jolla has filed for debt restructuring and ceasing its on-going operations.

If Jolla somehow manages to get an investor, the tablets can be ordered from the manufacturer, the lay-offs can be cancelled and operations resumed.

They haven't said that. The exact quote from the press release: "Jolla will also temporarily lay off a big part of its personnel."

“There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform’s edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a “burning platform,” and he needed to make a choice.

He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times – his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a “burning platform” caused a radical change in his behaviour.

We too, are standing on a “burning platform,” and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.

Over the past few months, I’ve shared with you what I’ve heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I’m going to share what I’ve learned and what I have come to believe.

I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.

And, we have more than one explosion – we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.

For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.

In 2008, Apple’s market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.

And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry’s innovation to its core.

Let’s not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally – taking share from us in emerging markets.

While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Jolla? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Jolla, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought Sailfish would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2015, we might have only one Sailfish product in the market.

At the midrange, we have Sailfish. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Sailfish is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Jolla employee said only partially in jest, “the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.” They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.

And the truly perplexing aspect is that we’re not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we’ve lost market share, we’ve lost mind share and we’ve lost time.

On Tuesday, Standard & Poor’s informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody’s took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Jolla, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.

Consumer preference for Jolla declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Jolla to other brands. It’s also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.

How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?

This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Jolla. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven’t been delivering innovation fast enough. We’re not collaborating internally.

Jolla, our platform is burning.

We are working on a path forward — a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.

The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same."

Antti Saarnio - The fake one

Translation of HS article in English:

Jolla has not been able to deliver pre-paid devices to customers - 12 000 tablets paid, deliveries on hold
Finance 21.11.2015 22:01 Updated: 22.11.2015 11:10

Jukka Perttu
Helsingin sanomat

Caption: Jolla's Marc Dillon presented the company's tablet in Slush in November 2014.

The software company Jolla which has announced on applying for corporate restructuring has not been able to deliver already customer paid tablets, or tablet computers, on the schedule. Now deliveries are completely on hold, says the communications director Juhani Lassila.

The company has received a ferocious amount of calls as the people who have paid for the device are asking, at what stage they are in the delivery queue.

Jolla has received orders and prepayments for 12 000 tablets, of which a small batch was delivered last month, says Lassila.

Corporate restructuring of Jolla was announced on Friday. The company plans to temporarily lay off a large part of its workforce.

The company gathered orders and advance payments, about a year ago and in February-March of this year, for a total of 10 000 devices. In these campaigns the upfront payments were collected by appying a crowdfunding principle, Lassila says. In addition, this fall Jolla took orders and advance payments for a few thousand tablets.

The company still accepted upfront payments in the autumn, because outlook was that it was possible to start deliveries in a larger extent, Lassila says.

However, according to him, the situation changed when it appeared that the supplier of displays for the devices had to be replaced due to technical reasons. In addition the availability of funding was delayed in November.

Lassila says the company's goal is still to continue the deliveries of the ordered and paid tablets. The delivery for the second batch of devices has been prepared, but the company is unable to provide a schedule for it.

The company is hoping that it would be able to arrange additional funding in December. Also Jolla has to be able to successfully agree on issues with an equipment manufacturer.

Jolla was founded four years ago. The company has been developing its own Sailfish OS operating system, which is based on Meego, used earlier by Nokia. Jolla is not an equipment manufacturer so its goal is to license Sailfish. In addition to the pre-sold tablet Jolla has sold smartphones using Sailfish.

According to the company it has many small and large customers who are interested in using Sailfish.

Jolla has told temporarily to lay off a large part of its workforce and that its money has run out.

Correction 22.11.2015 at 11.10: Displays were not replaced to be larger, but the manufacturer of the displays was changed to another one.

I was one of the first 200 to pledge money over well over a year ago, I've received nothing. I was told to expect my tablet this month, it's now the 22nd and I have no word of shipping and nothing expected. I think that I will just have to eat the costs. I am not angry, I believe in what they were trying to do, but the phone was **** to be fair, although the tablet looked great a year ago, it looks heavy and a bit lacking now as it's been delayed so long. It's a pity, but unless MS can make a dent with the rumoured Surface Phone it's a duopoly from here on out.

...and I was one of the last optimists who pay for imaginary tablet.
But, I'm angry, because that amount is almost half of My salary.
And I'm disappointed because SFOS is so good I cannot change for android.
And I'm angry again because I suggested Jolla phone to My friend to buy it.

AFAIK half of the personnel is temporarily laid off. Negotiations have been with single investor for three months, but at the last minute it was delayed, thus they were unable to deliver the Tablets. Negotiations still go on, debt restructuring of course looks ugly but it's a means to protect the company for duration of time so they can close the funding round during December - if they can. Another thing is that they might need to change the way Sailfish OS is handled, as there is demand for it to be modified to several different purposes, but Jolla has been very protective about it to avoid fragmentation of the platform (Android suffered from severe fragmentation issues and it was sorted out more or less harshly if I remember it correctly...) but opening it up to modifications and different purposes IMO are essential for the vitality of the platform in the long run. This might be one thing they are discussing with the investor X.

However, if this investor X folds, Jolla will not be able to keep the talent to keep Sailfish OS in continued development and most likely they end up in bankruptcy. Someone else takes over the assets and our little community will pop some champagne for celebrating yet another failed attempt to challenge iOS/Android duopoly....

Quote from Helsingin Sanomat:

Saarnion mukaan lomautuksen koskevat kaikkia yhtiön 70 työntekijää. Lomautus ei välttämättä toteudu kaikkien osalta, jos yhtiö onnistuu hankkimaan rahoituksen joulukuussa.

According to Saarnio, all the 70 employees will be affected by the temporary lay off. If funding can be arranged in December, the lay off will not necessarily affect all the employees.

Source: http://www.hs.fi/talous/a1447999381004

Yeah, so there is noone left.