Sailfish OS Receives Certification for Government and Corporate Use in Russia

Jolla’s Sailfish mobile OS platform hasn’t had the best of luck over the years. The company’s first flagship device was first shown off back in 2013, and later that year they announced Android owners would soon be able to install the Sailfish OS on select smartphones. The company announced the Jolla tablet in late 2014, which would be the second Sailfish OS device to be released by the company.

Toward the middle of 2015, the company even struck a deal to have their mobile OS installed on the Yotaphone (beating out both Android and Tizen). Things were looking good for the Finnish company, but then they started running into financial issues at the end of 2015. In January of this year, Jolla had to tell their community that not every backer would be able to receive the Jolla Tablet they paid for.

They were able to produce 540 tablets, but said they were looking into refunding the other 21,000 Indiegogo campaign backers. While looking for some additional funding, Jolla was able to close on a $12 million round in May of this year. These investors now include shareholders in its Russian licensing customer OMP (Open Mobile Platform) and this has forced the company to switch to a b2b company instead of being b2c like they were before.

Russia hasn’t been the biggest fan of Google and their Android platform. In early 2015, Russia said they would start an antitrust investigation into Google and which concluded with claims that Google’s pre-loaded Android applications were violating the company’s antitrust laws. Since then, Russia has been actively looking into alternatives for the country’s mobile platform of choice and it seems like they found one with Jolla’s Sailfish OS.

Jolla says the Russian version of Sailfish OS will not be a fork. Instead, they will be working closely with its licensing partners within the country to develop custom versions that suit their particular needs. So Jolla will continue to maintain the core code base and that will be tied to all custom versions they develop.

Source: TechCrunch

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