Jolla, the smartphone operating system start-up set up by refugees from Nokia, is to announce the availability of new mobile devices running its Sailfish operating system this month.
The devices will be available, according to the company, either in summer or early autumn, but it is keeping details about the operating system specifications and devices close to its chest at the moment.
Further reading
Jolla finally unveils Sailfish – a Linux-based rival to Android, iOS and Windows Phone MeeGo-based phone from Jolla to be ‘revealed’ later this year AMD joins MeeGo project
"The final specification of the product we'll talk about at launch. But... when you make it a spec' war it doesn't really have anything to do with how the phone feels to the user and what it's like," Dillon said in an interview at Mobile World Congress in February 2013.
The company has signed deals with China's largest mobile retailer D.Phone and Finnish carrier DNA, which will presumably be the first outlets to offer Sailfish-based phones.
Ahead of the announcement and the launch, the company has appointed Tomi Pienimäki as the new CEO, starting on 6 May, while current CEO Marc Dillon will become head of software development.
"Marc has been in charge of Jolla's software development right from the start and his strong focus on this will be crucial in the months leading to the market entry of the first Jolla phone and the company's success when the sales starts," said Jolla in a statement.
Pienimäk has been recruited to Jolla from Itella Corporation, one of the largest logistics companies in the Nordic countries. Pienimäki had joined Itella in 2005 as chief technology officer, becoming a rare executive to have progressed from that position to the office of CEO - after becoming CIO at the company in 2008.
Sailfish OS is based on the MeeGo operating system binned by Nokia after CEO Stephen Elop chose standardise the company's smartphone platform on Microsoft Windows Phone. Sailfish, like Android and Tizen, is based on Linux, but in a form intended for user-friendly, low-power-consumption mobile devices.
MeeGo had originally been intended to run on an Intel mobile-friendly platform, but stalled largely because Intel was unable to produce the hardware.
It was subsequently ported to ARM - the de facto mobile device standard chip platform - but only appeared on the Nokia N9 in September 2011 after it had been condemned as a result of Elop's pact with Nokia.
