Jolla Brings MeeGo SmartphonesTo China

Thought to have been doomed when Nokia dropped it, the MeeGo operating systemis getting a new lease of life on phones in China, as its curernt owner, Jolla has signed a sales and distribution deal with the D.Phone Group.

D.Phone’s 2,000 stores make it the largest mobile phone retail chain in China, and the new partners hope that they will be able to use that network to tap into the country’s growing appetite for smartphones.

Jolla MeeGo Revival

“China has the largest and most rapidly expanding smartphone market in the world,” said Dr Antti Saarnio, Chairman of Jolla. “This agreement with D.Phone is a major step in Jolla’s journey towards becoming a significant player in the global smartphone market.”

“We see great potential for Jolla as a new player in the Chinese smartphone market with Jolla’s fresh and unique user experience,” added Donghai Liu, founder and CEO of the D.Phone Group. “Together with Jolla our aim is to reach significant sales volumes.”

Jolla was founded by former Nokia engineers and has been working on its first product for the past 12 months and is expected to reveal its first smartphone running the Linux-based MeeGo open source operating system that it acquired from Nokia, later this year.

MeeGo was developed by Nokia and Intel as an alternative Linux-based phone operating system, to stand against iOS and Android. It was intended as a replacement for Nokia’s ageing Symbian platform, and was used in  the Nokia N9 smartphone. However before it was even released, Nokia had announced its intention to abandon it in favour of Windows Phone, with Intel following suit last October.

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