Jolla, the Finnish developer of the open mobile operating system Sailfish OS, today announced that it has secured new financing of $12 million to advance the Sailfish OS development and licensing business further. Jolla is currently also recruiting new software developers to strengthen its product development for new and upcoming projects.
After some financing challenges last autumn, Jolla
has now entered into an agreement with its main creditors, and has canceled its debt restructuring application in Finland. Powered by the new funding (investors were not announced), the Helsinki-based company is now able to continue further the Sailfish OS development work, proceed with closing the Jolla Tablet project, and extend its licensing partnerships.
Antti Saarnio, Chairman of the Board, Jolla comments: “After our financial challenges at
the end of last year, we are now on a strong path out of our third start-up death valley.
Through good negotiations and positive support from our main creditors we have found a way to avoid the formal and heavy debt restructuring procedure in Finland, for the benefit of all parties involved. This investment is sufficient to run our operations until the end of this year. We are also in the planning phase for our further financing rounds. Now we can put all focus on further improving our main asset, Sailfish OS.”
The project affected the most with the financial challenges was the Jolla Tablet. Jolla will only be able to fulfill a small number of tablet shipments to its crowdfunding backers, and has decided to refund all the remaining Jolla Tablet contributions done via Indiegogo. The refunds will be split into two rounds due to financial constraints: round one will see half of the refund paid out now, and round two will see the rest paid out within a year of round one – depending on Jolla’s financial status. All payments from round one are anticipated to be processed during April and May 2016, which will close the first part of the refund program.
During the first months of the year, the Jolla team focused on Sailfish OS licensing projects. In India, Jolla is in the final phases of the project with Intex Technologies, and the Intex Aqua Fish smartphone, also presented in this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, is set to enter the Indian market during the coming months. Another new project for Jolla is with Turing Robotics Industries, with whom Jolla has made a Sailfish OS licensing agreement and is developing the software for the upcoming Turing smartphone.
Dr. Saarnio continues: “Sailfish OS is already running fast on the Turing phone, and we
are now working together to get all the needed software in place. We at Jolla believe that it is possible to produce niche target group smart devices in Finland, as Turing is now
planning to do. Our aim is to support them in the best way we can.”
Jolla was founded in 2011 and has offices in Helsinki and Tampere, Finland and in Hong Kong.
