After Nokia sold the rights to its mobile phone division to Microsoft, I was left wondering, “What Next?” Being Finnish, it was tough loosing such a huge part of national heritage, a pulp and paper mill from the 1800’s that became a mobile phone giant. After the acquisition we were left with “Angry Birds.” But today Finland re-entered the mobile market with Jolla.
Jolla was founded by engineers who had left Nokia. The engineer were unhappy with the direction taken moving the N9 to the Microsoft platform. So they built their own device and operating system, Sailfish, to fill a need they saw while at Nokia. The OS is based on gestures on the screen either moving a finger from the edge to the center or from the center to an edge. A unique approach to user input, but will it “slide” with the consumer.
The first 450 phones were delivered today to users in Helsinki for $550 per unit. It will be time that tells what happens to the fourth mobile OS in the current market. (Is it too early to lump Blackberry with Palm and Symbian?) Under the Nokia brand it might have had legs. But one has to wonder if spending $550 for a phone that borrows it’s apps from Android, with an emulator, is going to be what a consumer is willing to do outside Finland.
