Core Nokia MeeGo Team Announces New Company in Jolla

This means that during Nokia has but to officially confirm the status of its MeeGo devices, the N9/N950/N900 are as good as dead when talking about active device status, as the core MeeGo team handled last week’s N9 update and rolled it out as a sign of goodwill earlier departing Nokia officially. This as well means that anyone that wants to buy an N9 or can manage to find an N950 should buy it in the short term to receive the latest update, as there’s no immediate word on how long it will remain available.  This is especially true for owners in Latin American markets, as the N9 was one of the few phones to thrive against Android and iOS in those markets where it was made available on an official basis, just as Mexico and Argentina.

The main goal of Jolla is to build new phones with the Mer fork of MeeGo for not only the development community nevertheless also for general consumers. For the purpose, it is teasing larger than normal levels of investment with the goal of creating new hardware for sale yet has but to confirm timelines for devices or even who is backing them. Below, a statement on Jolla from chief operating officer  Marc Dillion. taken from the company’s LinkedIn page.

Jolla Ltd. is a Finland based smartphone company which continues the great work that Nokia started with MeeGo. The Jolla team is formed by directors and core professionals from Nokia’s MeeGo N9 organisation, at the same time with some of the best minds working on MeeGo in the communities.

The world’s best smartphone product

Nokia created something wonderful – the world’s best smartphone product. It deserves to be continued, and we will do that at the same time with all the bright and gifted people contributing to the MeeGo success story.

Together with international investors and partners, Jolla Ltd. will design, develop and sell new MeeGo based smartphones. The Jolla team consists of a substantial number of MeeGo’s core engineers and directors, and is aggressively hiring the top MeeGo talent to contribute to the then generation smartphone production.

For Nokia, they’ve lost the “Plan B” that executives and shareholders secretly admitted to having following the drastic pursuant to this agreement performance of Windows Phone now that Symbian is nearly moribund save for updates from Accenture and Meltemi is dead.

MeeGo went from being Nokia’s potential savior with incredible performance and glowing critical praise, to Stephen Elop’s worst nightmare as it was already years ahead of Windows Phone 7 and 8. This led him to relegate it to an internal project at the behest of many employees in order to drive the Windows Phone platform, a platform that is however struggling and increasingly driving more people to alternatives as the straightway version won’t be out until later this Fall and possibly not until the same timeframe as Windows 8 proper. This would complicate short-term prospects for Nokia even furthermore than they already are, since current Lumia series devices will not be updated, save for a token update and more people are refusing to buy Lumia smartphones until the first wave of Windows Phone 8 devices.

For everyone else looking in, Jolla is but another alternative  to the growing dominance of iOS and Android, with the advantages of being unencumbered by the myriad of patent issues that now define Android and are allowing for the recent crop of alternatives just as Firefox OS and Open webOS to gain traction, especially in light of recent high-profile judgements against device manufacturers just as HTC  and Samsung for violating patents held by Apple, which have led to damaging device embargos and modifications that have actively hamstrung performance on select Android devices.

Dr. Antti Saarnio - Chairman & FinanceMr. Jussi Hurmola - CEOMr. Sami Pienimäki - VP, Sales & Business DevelopmentMr. Stefano Mosconi - CIOMr. Marc Dillon - COO

The Editor-in-Chief

Humberto Saabedra is the Editor-in-Chief. When not working on the news, he can as a rule be found contributing to Crunchyroll News and Ani.me as a news editor and columnist respectively as then as writing commentary on the business side of Japanese pop culture on AnimeNews.biz..