Trailing behind BlackBerry 10, Cyanogen OS, Tizen, Ubuntu Touch, and Windows Phone in the quest to challenge the Android-iOS duopoly that currently dominates the mobile market, is this little-known mobile operating system called Sailfish OS. It’s an interesting operating system that has a lot of potential, but it came dangerously close to dying off before it could meet that potential a few months ago when Jolla, its Helsinki-based developer, ran out of money and had to let half of its staff go. Fortunately, a secret group of investors has given Jolla an unspecified amount of funding to keep development of Sailfish OS going, and apparently it’s just a fraction of the investments to come.
Last time when I wrote here, we had just heard that our financing round had not succeeded as expected and realized that we were in a full on financial crisis situation. In other words, the whole continuation of the Jolla story was in a real jeopardy and unfortunately we had to make some drastic moves to handle the situation. I was personally very happy to see so many community members and followers react to the dire situation we were in. My personal “we are fighting tweet” got 548 retweets and the wonderful initiative ISupportJolla gathered a lot of heartwarming comments and helped us fight the battle. I can’t thank you enough for the continuing support you have shown to us! Now, it is my pleasure to share you really good news: we’re back from the death valley! We have just finished our latest financing round and secured solid new financing to the company. This investment enables the continuation of Sailfish OS development, the community activities and other company operations. It’s clear that this recent struggle hit us hard and left some battle wounds but most importantly this means that the development and life of Sailfish OS will continue strong. This alone is worth a celebration!
