Jolla Says India Is Its 'Most Important Market'

Finland's Jolla, the Nokia break-away operating system company that transformed its erstwhile MeeGo operating system into Sailfish, will focus on India but only on software platform to expand in fast-growing markets, a top official said in Shanghai on Thursday.

Jolla didn't have a good show with its own devices and was "nearly-fading out", as put by Antti Saarnio, executive chairman of Jolla.

"There was absence of a marketing campaign," Saarnio told IANS, adding that the strategy has since been changed to earn more profits and become more relevant. "India is the most important market for us. Seventy percent of our resources are being used to turn the market profitable."

The chairman said the brand will look to tie-ups with regional vendors and manufacturers to push the sales of its operating system. "We are looking at players who have the numbers to push our operating system. A vendor/manufacturer must have at least 10 million users."

As part of its changed strategy, the Finnish brand will also tie up with local e-commerce and apps to provide regional content on the operating system itself.

"Sailfish's integrated user experience will bring in more number of users - in turn bringing in more revenues via content and e-commerce channels. This will also benefit the partners to get more visibility," a Jolla spokesperson said.

The company, which has invested nearly $50 million (roughly Rs.317 crores) since 2012 and has 130 employees, said it would also be talking to the Russian government and looking at vendors to start licensing its operating system in Russia. It also has major plans to launch its operating system in China.

Jolla, which currently can only run on Qualcomm, is also preparing its operating system to run on other processors. "Our operating system will be ready by the first half of next year and this will increase our chances of being more popular," Saarnio said.

He also said that the company will continue to bring out phones of its own in small numbers, although the Finnish company was tying up with original equipment manufacturers. "We will continue with our devices business as we love it," Saarnio said.

The operating system needs at least 2GB of RAM and a quad-core processor to run smoothly. The minimum requirements are 1GB RAM and a dual-core processor.