Mobile OS maker, Jolla, known for building the Sailfish OS, has today announced its excursion into the Dragon’s territory. It has today been announced that Jolla has signed an exclusive license with a Chinese consortium to build an independent Sailfish-based OS for the country. This operating system will be completely exclusive to the territory of China.
To head their exclusive Sailfish division in China, the company has courted one of the leading PE investors of the country — Mr. Shan Li. He is also an early investor in Jolla’s vision of building an operating system that can break the monopoly enjoyed by Android. The latter, if you’re unaware, hold a massive ~82 percent market share, followed by iOS at ~17 percent. The remaining 1 percent accounts for other OS’ like Windows 10 Mobile, Sailfish, Tizen, and others.
Talking about this initiative, Shan Li says,
China needs an own independent mobile operating system. I have been closely following Sailfish OS development and seen many Chinese projects fail, while Jolla’s Sailfish OS has been steadily progressing. Sailfish OS is the only viable alternative for China.
Jolla has long been mulling over the decision to enter China and build an ecosystem around the said operating system. They not only want to power smartphones via their Chinese Sailfish OS but also want to reach the masses through a collection of consumer-focused solutions, be it a smart TV, smartwatch, IoT devices or even connected automobiles. And to make this ambition a reality, the Chinese consortium has decided to invest around $250 million for the development of the ecosystem.
Shedding further light on their vision, Antti Saarnio, Chairman of Jolla says,
Since the beginning of Jolla, for five long years, we have been aiming to offer Sailfish OS for the China market. At the same time, China has for many years tried to build their own OS based on Android, but without success.
With this exclusive license to the Chinese consortium, we offer a very fast path to build an independent operating system, which gives China the opportunity to build their mobile technology on solid rock, instead of sand.
He further adds that a country’s national OS strategy shouldn’t be controlled by outside forces, but right from within. Saarnio means to say that the former could lead to uncertain hiccups down the road while having an in-house OS strategy will go farther. Jolla has already deployed a similar independent OS solution in Russia, where the license is held by Open Mobile Platform.
The team was able to successfully develop their Russian Sailfish-based OS in just six months, so one can expect a similar timeline for China as well. Plus, the official release adds that they’ve already started seeing traction from major Chinese hardware manufacturers — which is positive and adds weight to their proposition.
