Jolla Signs Up First Sailfish OS Partner

Jolla has signed up Indian smartphone manufacturer Intex Technologies as its first Sailfish OS licensing partner, with the Finnish firm hoping the deal will generate interest from other third-parties.

Intex will use Sailfish OS, based on the MeeGo platform abandoned by Nokia when it adopted Windows Phone, in a number of future smartphones and will work with Jolla on ‘Sailfish India’, a country-specific mobile ecosystem featuring content from local providers and applications.

The latest version of the operating system, Sailfish OS 2.0, offers a feature called ‘Partnerspace’, a location within the OS in which local apps and services are heavily promoted. This creates revenue-sharing opportunities for operators and manufacturers within the Sailfish ecosystem.

Sailfish OS licensing

“We strongly believe that services, which are integrated on the OS level in a prominent location will get ten times more user exposure and will generate multiple times higher user revenues (ARPU),” explained Antti Saarnio, Jolla executive Chairman. “Sailfish OS user interface is designed to support higher ARPU generation for our content and e-commerce partners.

“With Intex devices combined with quality content from Times Internet and Snapdeal this new business concept is going to have a world premier in India. Jolla is proud to be in the frontier with its Indian ecosystem partners, and introduce new business models for the whole mobile industry.”

Jolla has released one Sailfish OS-powered smartphone of its own and has announced a crowdfunded tablet, but has always said it wants to get other manufacturers on board. The Russian government is working with the company to create a country-specific mobile operating system, while Jolla itself has separated its device making and licensing divisions.

Sailfish India

To aid adoption, the company has created a number of LTE ready reference platforms based on Qualcomm Snapdragon 200, 400 or 800 processors, which it says will help partners get their devices onto the market more quickly.

“We are very excited to be the world’s first licensing partner for Sailfish OS,” said Sanjay Kalirona, head of Intex’s mobile business. “We look forward to utilising the great user experience of the next generation Sailfish OS 2.0 in our products. Together with the Sailfish India ecosystem partners we believe that we can provide an exciting alternative for smartphone lovers in India and later globally as well.

“With an open platform like Sailfish OS we have a magnificent opportunity to offer great locally relevant premium content to our customers, all integrated directly into the smartphone’s operating system.”

How much do you know about Linux? Take our quiz!