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Jolla Goes For Debt Restructuring (phoronix.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the paying-those-jolla-jolla-bills,-y'all dept.

jones_supa writes: Months after the smartphone company Jolla announced its split and intent to focus on Sailfish OS licensing, its financial situation has not improved. Jolla's latest financing round has been delayed and so they have had to file for debt restructuring in Finland. As part of that, the company is temporarily laying off a big part of its personnel (Google translation of Finnish original). Jolla co-founder Antti Saarnio said, "Our operating system Sailfish OS is in great shape currently and it is commercially ready. Unfortunately the development until this point has required quite a lot of time and money (PDF). To get out of this death valley we need to move from a development phase into a growth phase. At the same time we need to adapt our cost levels to the new situation. One of the main actions is to tailor the operating system to fit the needs of different clients. We have several major and smaller potential clients who are interested in using Sailfish OS in their projects."

26 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Ob car analogy[1] by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    To get out of this death valley we need to move from a development phase into a growth phase.

    We are not outnumbered. We are in a target rich environment with a low blue-on-blue probability.

    At the same time we need to adapt our cost levels to the new situation.

    We are not surrounded. We're operating on interior lines.

    [1] of the armoured variety

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  2. Thank you engineering team... by JoeMerchant · · Score: 4, Informative

    Thank you very much, capable engineers who have developed our product. Sadly, unless you have skills in sales and marketing, we simply cannot afford you at this time.

    Sincerely,

    The management team who should have seen this coming but is acting surprised.

    1. Re:Thank you engineering team... by invictusvoyd · · Score: 1

      This is what happens when an engineering company is run by a bunch of managers.

    2. Re:Thank you engineering team... by nikkipolya · · Score: 1

      What? The managers get rich?

  3. Get in line by JoeyRox · · Score: 3, Funny

    Blackberry is still trying to license theirs.

  4. In other words ... by gstoddart · · Score: 1

    To get out of this death valley we need to move from a development phase into a growth phase. At the same time we need to adapt our cost levels to the new situation.

    We're losing money like mad and haven't yet figured out a workable business model, so in order to maintain executive bonuses we need to get rid of some people.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:In other words ... by CrashNBrn · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In America maybe. Except this is Finland. Executive salary likely isn't more than 5-10x that of the blue collar workers. On top of that, I highly doubt that a company founded by Engineers from Finland would of set up an internal company infrastructure to include "executive bonuses".

      In other words, Yeah No.

  5. Am I the only one hoping... by BellyJelly · · Score: 4, Funny

    that Nokia buys them out?

  6. What a shame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's a real shame to see this happen to them, I had been hoping that the Jolla phone might make it to North America before my Lumia kicked it, and with no 3G support on North American bands and iffy LTE functionality I couldn't just buy the phone directly from them. Now it seems quite unlikely I'll ever see a Jolla phone this side of the pond, especially since I did end up having to replace the Lumia fairly recently. I'm now using an Android device and hate almost every minute of it, as it is infested with Google "apps" (really they're just shortcuts to launch chrome with a particular URL).

  7. I had a N9 by Ecuador · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I had a Nokia N900, a great linux-based phone, especially if you were an advanced user. Then I sacrificed the qwerty keyboard that I liked on the N900 and got a Nokia N9. To this day, I maintain that it was by far the best mobile phone UI I have ever used. Best feature was probably the app switching, so quick and easy to go from one app and the other and at the same time deciding whether the app you are leaving keeps running in the background or terminates. And the hardware and design was great as well. When I first got it, my wife tried it out with its beautiful Super Amoled curved display and told me "hey, next to your iPhone (a brand new 4S if I recall) this one looks like it is from 2030!". In fact when I switched to a Samsung Galaxy S3 (due to some apps I needed and were not available for Maemo/Meego), it was the first time ever I thought my new phone was (much) worse than the previous one. Right now I have an iPhone 6 plus and a Xiaomi Mi4 and I still miss that N9!
    So, this was just a side note before saying thanks to the engineers who brought us what was the best mobile OS so far and it should have dominated the market, if only the marketing was as good as the actual product. When I first heard about Jolla I hoped I would be able to get another phone as good as the ol' N9 at some point, so I am sorry to hear about their struggles.

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
    1. Re:I had a N9 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You're full of shit. I had both N900 and N9 and they were complete garbage compared to the Nexus 5 that I'm using now. Fact of the matter is that Nokia produced nice hardware, but they never knew how to produce good software.

    2. Re:I had a N9 by short · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have N900 and for about a month LG G4 and I remained using N900. Without QWERTY it is unusable, to write TODO lists, notes, even to write URLs, those on-screen keyboards take forever to type together with many typos, and it is just inconvenient. When I need to do anything with the phone I SSH to N900 but I haven't yet found anything similar in Android. There are some chroot Linuxes but I could not get sshd running there. IIRC I got sshd working on Android itself but the shell is unusable there (or maybe I even did not get sshd working there, not sure now).

    3. Re:I had a N9 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I agree with you wholeheartedly as I also owned a N900 (two in fact due to the poor soldering of the microUSB port). It really demonstrated that you could have a desktop in a small form factor that could also function as a phone back in 2000-2010 era using their maemo OS. I certainly think that Nokia at the time really messed up their mobile strategy as they had a stranglehold with Symbian. If they could have converted, the mobile OS landscape could have been quite different given how the N9 turned out.

    4. Re:I had a N9 by timmyf2371 · · Score: 1

      I found hardware qwerty phone keyboards the most difficult to use and introduced the most errors. Probably because the keys are so small. I find the iOS software keyboard really simple to use, especially with autocorrect. I can usually walk and type with my thumbs (looking ahead rather than at the phone) and most of the time it is correct.

      But nothing will beat the original 0-9 and T9 for ease of use and accuracy. I don't really remember which I liked the best - I used 0-9 (multi tap) for years and then one day I got a new phone and made a conscious effort to learn T9 and after that I was hooked.

      --

      Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
    5. Re:I had a N9 by short · · Score: 1

      T9 is easy to write but difficult to read. :-)

    6. Re:I had a N9 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Looks like you are the one full of shit. If you had the N900 which even people who still hold on to it admit it did not have polished software and you liked it enough despite it obvious flaws to get the much more polished N9, why would you think they are garbage? And in general, let's forget about the things that an Android cannot do, just the basic UI fluidity on an android requires at least 2x the hardware, so any Android that is not top of the line feels like crap compared to anything running Nokia's OS.

    7. Re:I had a N9 by jcdr · · Score: 1

      I have the N770 N800 N810 N900 N9 Nexus S, and now the Nexus 5P since a week. Of course the technology of the Nexus 5P completely surpass the N9, but from the UI point of view I found the Nexus S unusable even after upgrading to Android 4.3. The Nexus 5P is much better in many point but still far far away from the N9 UI design. Some random observations:

      * The N9 always display the time and important status when his proximity sensor don't detect light reflection from a pocket. I just have to look at it to know the time and if I have a received a message, not even to touch it. The N9 laminated OLED display on curved edge glass have a ultra low power mode that allow to let some pixels in on state while the main processor is in sleep mode. The Nexus 5P need a least to be inclined for a least 1 second to make it display something. The Nexus 5P seem to be a LCD screen with a backlight on the the full surface even when displaying only the time.

      * The N9 is outrageously conformable to hold in the hand. It has no corners in the contact of the hand and the transition from the case to the curved screen edge is almost imperceptible. Never found a better phone case design to date.

      * The N9 react to a double tape on the screen with a finger by displaying a home screen and give direct access to the other main screens with a swipe in the good direction. The Nexus 5P is not reacting to any touch screen solicitation, the only way is to touch a button or the fingerprint scanner.

      * The N9 UI navigation is deadly simple and extremely effective. Simply swipe from the edge of the screen from any application to go to the application menu, application switching menu, or the status feed screen. The Nexus 5P Marshmallow Android have the round and square button to do almost the same but it's less comfortable because there are at the bottom of the screen. The swipe of the N9 can be done anywhere along the edge of the screen, and when you use a single hand to hold and operate the device it's more quick and comfortable to swipe on the region near the top of the screen.

      * The N9 allow to close an application by simply swipe it from the top to the bottom direction, so effective. The Marshmallow require to first go to the application switching menu.

      * The N9 present a small view of the full applications screens in the application switching menu, in two selectable size. This make the selection of applications far more quick and easy than the rolling applications selector of Marshmallow.

      * The N9 can act as a fully normal and very fast USB memory. I have not yes tried this with the Nuxus 5P (because his box don't include a USB type A cable), but I Android killed this feature sometime after the Nexus S. I found the two replacement protocols unstable and boringly slow on the Galaxy S3 for example.

      * The N9 fully integrate the socials network into this core feature applications like only the last Android try to do. Still the way Skype is integrated into the N9 is vastly superior as the contacts and messages notifications are fully merged with the system. With the N9, the application or protocols used to send and receive call and messages are just a details on the configuration of the accounts settings. After that, the core system take care of the detail for you and present all the protocols with the same framework. From my point of view this was the most advanced feature of the N9, still far away ahead of the last Android.

      Overall, the N9 is still a reference in surprisingly number of points even 5 years after his release and murder.

  8. "Took off my watch... by swschrad · · Score: 1

    "Now I got all the time in the world." -- The Association

    --
    if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
  9. Re:Wanna have my money? by tlambert · · Score: 1

    Simple: I wanna give it. You don't even have to shake it down from me.

    Just sell me a phone with Sailfish OS. Here. In Brazil.

    Certainly, sir.

    I'll need your billing information and shipping address. Let's start with billing...

    Which reserve currency will you be paying for this in? U.S. dollars, euros, pounds sterling, Japanese yen, Swiss francs, or Canadian dollars?

    The Brazilian banking system did freaking *what*?!?!?!?

    Sorry sir; you can not buy anything internationally, period.

    Please contact your local government stooge to find out which company in your area is paying sufficient bribes to get things into your country legally, and then contact them to see which one of those is willing to import our product on your behalf.

    Thank you again for calling, [any company not actually incorporated in Brazil].

  10. The phone OS wars are settled by johanw · · Score: 1

    And Android is the clear winner, with iOS a good second. I don't see more than 2 major OSes on this market. Other OSes will only remain alive when they are developed for free, or when big companies are willing to compensate the losses (Samsung with Tizen and Microsoft with Windows Phone).

    1. Re:The phone OS wars are settled by invictusvoyd · · Score: 1

      Other OSes will only remain alive when they are developed for free, or when big companies are willing to compensate the losses (Samsung with Tizen and Microsoft with Windows Phone).

      Or else if you shove them down the users throat

  11. Looks like spurning the US was bad after all. by sethstorm · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Perhaps if they actively courted the US market, they wouldn't be in this mess.

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  12. Re:I had a N9The N900 was the best phone I ever ha by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And Maemo was *much* better than the shitty android I'm using now!
    I had the same spreadsheet I've used on my desktop, similar editors, fantastic app switching, a browser that actually loaded website in the background windows (to this day I have to wayit when I switch tabs in android: yack!

    In a word: it was fantastic!

    I still miss it. The only thing better now is my wacom stylus: *much* better than the one in the N900 ;)

  13. Re:Wanna have my money? by Herve5 · · Score: 1

    They have a tablet, crowdfunded, that you visibly ignored. I did pay for one, that I won't receive. I don't regret it; if anythinh I regret not having bought a couple of others, which may have helped keeping them afloat. Sailfish linux OS, on a nordic-designed device, for some €200.
    Really too bad you missed it.

    --
    Herve S.
  14. Re:Wanna have my money? by Eunuchswear · · Score: 1

    Get an old nexux 5, download the sailfish 2.0 image, insall it.

    --
    Watch this Heartland Institute video
  15. Nexus 5P - 5X by jcdr · · Score: 1

    Sorry, in the previous comment I have wrote "Nexus 5P" while I must have wrote "Nexus 5X". I was confused by the Nexus 6P, but the one I own is the Nexus 5X. That said, I don't think this will affect the observations.