Digitoday reports that Jolla has found the first manufacturer to licence their operating system. Company in question is Indian smartphone vendor Intex Technologies. Phones are expected to launch later this year. Jolla is aiming find more partners mainly in BRICS (Brazil, China, South Africa and Russia) countries to use their SailFish.
Original article is in Finnish and can be found: http://www.digitoday.fi/mobiili/2015/07/16/jolla-loysi-sailfishille-ottajan--kannykoitakin-luvassa/20158989/66. Google translator may result a bit funny, but Jolla's press release here has more information.
[Ed: UPDATE] Link to article from ITWorld in English]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SGT CAPSLOCK on Thursday July 16 2015, @09:59PM
I have mixed feelings about this whole "licensing Sailfish" thing they're doing.
Pros:
- Sailfish gains popularity from being used by many different phone manufacturers
- Jolla gets to focus on Sailfish development exclusively now, so hopefully updates will be plentiful
- There's at least a chance that one or more actually "high-end" phones or phablets will be created by some hardware companies for Sailfish
Cons:
- Are the people licensing it going to screw with the UI / theme like HTC/Samsung/etc do with Android?
- Potentially lots of bloatware apps packaged by default
- Potentially non-default app stores/markets included by default
- Will they support future Sailfish updates direct from Jolla, or will Android's mistakes be repeated with phones stuck on old insecure versions?
- Will Jolla's image of supporting privacy & hackers be tarnished by the things the phone manufacturers do with their OS?
I hope everything works out. I'm not as excited about Sailfish as I was before Jolla announced their company's restructuring and future plans.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Thursday July 16 2015, @10:14PM
I predict all of your worst fears will come true and that most of the positives will be washed out with the Advertisements.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2015, @10:58PM
It's not as if Jolla really had any chance of success. If well-funded companies like RIM and M$ fail, some no name company was never going to break in. It's the same thing with Ubuntu phone.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2015, @12:00AM
It's a repeat of the death of PalmOS, except Sailfish is doing it before the hardware gets any popularity in the market.
I hope they prove me wrong.