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The Last Independent Mobile OS (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The year was 2010 and the future of mobile computing was looking bright. The iPhone was barely three years old, Google's Android had yet to swallow the smartphone market whole, and half a dozen alternative mobile operating systems -- many of which were devoutly open source -- were preparing for launch. Eight years on, you probably haven't even heard of most of these alternative mobile operating systems, much less use them. Today, Android and iOS dominate the global smartphone market and account for 99.9 percent of mobile operating systems. Even Microsoft and Blackberry, longtime players in the mobile space with massive revenue streams, have all but left the space. Then there's Jolla, the small Finnish tech company behind Sailfish OS, which it bills as the "last independent alternative mobile operating system." Jolla has had to walk itself back from the edge of destruction several times over the course of its seven year existence, and each time it has emerged battered, but more determined than ever to carve out a spot in the world for a truly independent, open source mobile operating system.
Jolla's Sailfish OS rose from the ashes of Nokia and Intel's ill-fated collaboration, MeeGo. The MeeGo project launched in 2010 in an attempt to merge Intel's Linux-based Moblin OS and Nokia's Maemo software platform into a single open-source mobile operating system that could take on Google. By 2011, Android had already surpassed Nokia in the smartphone market, a fact that wasn't lost on Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop, who in a memo described the company as standing on a "burning platform." Nokia only ever released one phone running MeeGo: the Nokia N9, which ended up being well received despite its limited release. But it was too little, too late. By 2011, Nokia was bleeding talent and it was clear that MeeGo wasn't going to keep the company competitive in the rapidly changing smartphone market. In a last-ditch effort, Nokia struck a partnership with Microsoft to provide the hardware for its next generation of Windows Phones, abandoning MeeGo entirely. The same couldn't be said for those developers who had worked on MeeGo and, before that, an open source mobile OS called Mer, based on Intel's Maemo system. In October 2011, three developers that had worked on Mer sent a message on a mailing list calling for the creation of a "MeeGo 2.0." At the same time, developer Sami Pienimaki and two others left Nokia to found their own company, which would use this new version of MeeGo as the basis for an open source mobile OS. And thus, Sailfish was born. In a cheeky homage to the "burning platform" memo, Pienimaki and his fellow defectors decided to name their company Jolla, a Finnish word connoting a small boat or life raft. Jolla has since turned to Russia and China, both of which were hungry for a secure alternative to Google-based systems. In late 2016, Sailfish OS achieved domestic certification in Russia for government and corporate us. Around the same time, Sailfish was also making moves in China. In early 2017, the Sailfish China Consortium gained the exclusive rights and license to develop a Chinese OS based on Sailfish.
Jolla's Sailfish OS rose from the ashes of Nokia and Intel's ill-fated collaboration, MeeGo. The MeeGo project launched in 2010 in an attempt to merge Intel's Linux-based Moblin OS and Nokia's Maemo software platform into a single open-source mobile operating system that could take on Google. By 2011, Android had already surpassed Nokia in the smartphone market, a fact that wasn't lost on Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop, who in a memo described the company as standing on a "burning platform." Nokia only ever released one phone running MeeGo: the Nokia N9, which ended up being well received despite its limited release. But it was too little, too late. By 2011, Nokia was bleeding talent and it was clear that MeeGo wasn't going to keep the company competitive in the rapidly changing smartphone market. In a last-ditch effort, Nokia struck a partnership with Microsoft to provide the hardware for its next generation of Windows Phones, abandoning MeeGo entirely. The same couldn't be said for those developers who had worked on MeeGo and, before that, an open source mobile OS called Mer, based on Intel's Maemo system. In October 2011, three developers that had worked on Mer sent a message on a mailing list calling for the creation of a "MeeGo 2.0." At the same time, developer Sami Pienimaki and two others left Nokia to found their own company, which would use this new version of MeeGo as the basis for an open source mobile OS. And thus, Sailfish was born. In a cheeky homage to the "burning platform" memo, Pienimaki and his fellow defectors decided to name their company Jolla, a Finnish word connoting a small boat or life raft. Jolla has since turned to Russia and China, both of which were hungry for a secure alternative to Google-based systems. In late 2016, Sailfish OS achieved domestic certification in Russia for government and corporate us. Around the same time, Sailfish was also making moves in China. In early 2017, the Sailfish China Consortium gained the exclusive rights and license to develop a Chinese OS based on Sailfish.
... what about UBports, Plasma Mobile, ... ...
SailfishOS might be the last major-company-independent commercial mobile OS not more not less
At the time of Elop's "burning platforms memo" Android was not outselling the Nokia platforms at the time which included Symbian based smartphones. Yes it was outselling the predecessor to MeeGo, which was only available in like a single model which was ludicrously expensive and available in limited quantities. He basically Osborned their whole lineup with that move.
Add to that that they moved to a version of Windows Phone which was totally incompatible with previous Windows Mobile applications, and those applications were themselves incompatible with the next version of Windows Phone which came out a year or two later and you have a recipe for disaster.
Just to set the record straight. The Nokia N9 was not "too little too late" and Stephen Elop's "burning platform" email was not some rational realization, but rather either the most blatant corporate assassination or greatest corporate blunder.
Nokia did have some serious problems because they had 2 competing factions - the established Symbian group and the Maemo/Meego group. The competition was not doing good, especially for the Maemo side (caused many delays), but at least there was finally a plan that did not alienate app developers: Symbian devs could switch to QT apps, a framework also good for Maemo/Meego.
When Stephen Elop took over, the first consumer Maemo/Meego phone was being prepared (its Maemo predecessor - the N900 was great for devs, pro users etc but not really a consumer phone). What he does, is he sends that notorious memo which alienates all loyal Nokia 3rd party app developers (Nokia still had a vibrant ecosystem) and then he buries Maemo/Meego by declaring a switch to Windoes Mobile. The reasoning he gave for switching away from Meego was that they would only be able to release one new Meego phone per year with the existing strategy, and he claimed that was not viable. Apart from doubting the fact they would not be able to develop more phones, I would like to ask the audience whether they know of another major company that would only release one smartphone per year (at least until recently) and how is that company doing currently?
Elop's problem with his "plan" however was that the N9 with Meego was AMAZING. And since they were already ready for production he had to allow for an initial small run. What he did though, was make sure they were sold only in very minor (even 3rd world where possible) markets. Mine was an import from Romania. I gave it to my non-techie wife to play around with it. She said "wow, compared to your iPhone 4, this looks like it came from 2025". Not being VM based like Android, it was as fluid as the iPhone, but without the imposed limitations of iOS you could do anything on it. For geeks, apart from the native apps you also had a full linux machine, but for non-Geeks the OS interface was where it excelled - I don't like buttonless normally, but the N9 "swipe" interface was the right way to implement it, with very fast and easy switching between apps etc. Due to the very limited availability it got very few reviews in major press - but whoever reviewed it was very impressed.
I had both an iOS, and Android and Meego at the time and the latter was clearly superior - if Nokia dedicated to it we would probably be enjoying much better smartphones right now. I know the saying "do not attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity", but it does seem more likely that Elop went from Microsoft to Nokia with the plan to make it worthless so that Microsoft can buy it to do their Windows Mobile experiment, with himself returning victoriously. That's the only explanation for both not producing the N9 in quantity, and also doing that memo that burned bridges (alienating the most important people - developers) before there was any alternative.
Anyway, I do hope Sailfish makes it, although I have not tried it so I don't know if the interface is as good as the N9 was with its "swipe" interface. But I consider both iOS and Android flawed for different reasons (I currently prefer Android on a Xiaomi Mi Mix 2) and hope we'll get another option at some point. And I don't mean how you can theoretically get a Sailfish phone now by jumping some hoops, but being able to actually get a flagship phone with the OS installed.
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