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Published in Mobiles

Jolla not so Jolly

by on25 November 2015


Trouble ahead


Jolla, which was supposed to rise from the ashes of an overcooked and badly carved Nokia, is in financial trouble.

The outfit has filed for debt restructuring and has even announced temporary layoffs of most of its workforce.

It has also halted all product deliveries which means that thousands of pre-ordered Jolla tablets are not getting undelivered to backers who have already paid for the tablet them.

All this makes it look like the company is doomed and might never deliver hardware products.

Jolla is supposed to be a software developer that did make a smartphone and is now trying deliver tablets that were a proof of concept for its Sailfish OS.

For those who came in late, Sailfish was a fork MeeGo, the mobile platform that Nokia initially developed and knifed to please its news Microsoft-friendly CEO Stephen Elop.

Jolla appeared to have got out of jail free and escaped the ructions at its former rubber boot making owner. The Jolla phone was met with relative success in that it mostly sold to Nokia relatives and a small outside distribution

This gave Jolla confidence to press into the world of keyboardless netbooks. Things looked promising when the Jolla tablet took crowdfunding by storm when the campaign launched late last year.

The company had to create a second campaign last February just to accommodate demand. Given the amount they gathered, it probably didn't cross anyone's mind that the company would fail to deliver.

The company has 10,000 pre-orders and was expected to start deliveries soon. Suddenly though the company had to change screen suppliers, postpone its financing round and now it is in trouble.

Last modified on 25 November 2015
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