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Jolla (Sailfish Holding)

Company

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Owners:
Votron

Owners

Created in the summer of 2011 by former Nokia employees. The company aims to create a modern independent mobile operating system that would help stimulate an innovative path to the development of the mobile industry without a dominant player. The platform is based on the Linux kernel and the Qt framework.

Sailfish Holding's offices are located in Finland in Hong Kong, Helsinki and Tampere.

History

2022

Developer of the Sailfish operating system, on the basis of which the Aurora OS was created, wants to get rid of Rostelecom in shareholders

The developer of mobile operating system based on - Linux Sailfish, whose code formed the basis of the Russian OS Aurora, is trying to distance itself from Russian shareholders. On February 28, 2022, Samuli Shimoyoki, Chairman of the Board of Jolla Oy, at [1], who wanted to buy out the company, Rostelecom as a/controlled by the state. The Russian telecommunication giant acquired a controlling stake Finnish in the developer in 2018 and, according to Samuli Simoyoki, this interferes with the business of Jolla in. To Europe

In 2015, Russian businessman Grigory [2] bought control of the company by a developer created by immigrants from Nokia [3]. He not only acquired a Finnish startup, but also organized the independent development of the Sailfish Mobile OS RUS mobile operating system (in 2019 it was renamed Aurora OS) in Russia on the basis of the Open Mobile Platform (OMP). In 2018, the Russian operator Rostelecom bought 75% of its shares in [4]. According to 2018 data, Rostelecom, through Votron, owned 61.5% of the shares of Sailfish Holding Ltd. (Hong Kong), which in turn controlled almost [5].

Rostelecom refused to answer the question of what share of the Finnish startup belongs to them as of March 2022.

Samuli Simoyoki wrote in LinkedIn that consultations have begun with the Finnish government and the international concern Mercedes-Benz Group, whose representative is also on the company's board of directors, about the possibility of buying out a Russian stake. According to the chairman of the board of Jolla, several European countries announced their readiness to cooperate with the developer after the ownership structure changes. Samuli Simoyoki is sure that his company can count on a great future. At the same time, he notes that since 2021, Jolla has not been conducting operations in Russia, and nothing connects it with the country, except that Rostelecom owns a share in the developer.

A brief history of Aurora OS, starting with the creation of the Finnish startup Jolla in 2011

Reporter of the technoblog Techcrunch Natasha Lomas in the [6] March 1 notes that back in 2019, Jolla stated that it concentrates a significant part of its activity in the Russian market. According to the author of the technoblog, for the company this is a huge miss - to abandon only a few years later.

At the same time, TechCrunch notes that the company was able to get its first profit only in 2020, and before that the company was unprofitable.

Jolla CEO and co-founder Sami Pienimaki confirmed to TechCrunch that since 2021, the developer has extremely reduced his supplies to Russia, so technological sanctions should not affect him. According to him, the company reoriented and in 2021 received the main income from the automotive industry. Co-founder Jolla is confident that by the end of 2022 the ownership structure will be changed.

Jolla's desire to extremely distance himself from Russian investors in the current political conditions is quite understandable. A similar tactic, due to the risk of falling under sanctions, is adhered to by many international technology companies, both foreign and domestic. For example, Acronis and Virtuozzo, created by immigrants from Russia, in March 2022 announced the suspension of operations in the country. Softline integrator positions itself in the international market as a company headquartered in London. The developer ABBYY in early February 2022 withdrew most of its products from the register of domestic software.

The press service of Rostelecom did not specify whether they received a proposal to buy back a stake in Jolla.

TechCrunch Draws attention to the fact that in 2016 Sailfish OS passed internal certification in Russia for state and corporate use.

Rostelecom explained that the Aurora OS is not related to Sailfish OS.

File:Aquote1.png
Our daughter of WMD and its products, including the Aurora mobile operating system, are independent of Jolla and Sailfish, both from a technological and legal point of view. The entire development process, all sources and assembly infrastructure, as well as (most importantly) all competencies for the development of the system, the release of its new versions and porting to new devices, are 100% provided by WMP, which includes three offices - in Innopolis, Moscow and St. Petersburg - with a total number of employees more than 230 people, - commented in Rostelecom.
File:Aquote2.png

General Director of WMD Pavel Eiges, commenting on the situation of TAdviser, drew attention to the fact that WMD is a Russian competence center that is engaged in independent development.

File:Aquote1.png
Aurora is an independent development, all exclusive rights to which belong to WMD. Nothing connects us with Jolla today. Yes, we initially had the right to use Jolla code, changing it to the specific requirements of our customers, developing it and creating our products using it. But today this is completely irrelevant - WMD has long been conducting independent product development and creating its own intellectual rights. Moreover, more programmers work today than ever worked in a Finnish startup, and we create products that Jolla could not even think about, "Pavel Eiges shared with TAdviser.
File:Aquote2.png

2015

Russians became shareholders of Jolla

In May 2015, Russian Minister of Communications Nikolai Nikiforov said that Sailfish Holding today is "actually an international company, in the ownership structure of which, in addition to Finnish, there are both Russian and Chinese shareholders."[7].

"We expect in the near future to see among the shareholders the developer of the Sailfish mobile OS also strategic Indian, Brazilian and South African investors," he added.

Which of the Russians is a shareholder of Sailfish Holding Minister did not report.

According to Nikiforov, Sailfish Holding is an excellent example of a specific project for international technological cooperation: "We continue to develop partnerships with the BRICS countries in the field of collective development ON for these significant markets, and they all share our concern about the problem of the current monopoly of the world software market and support us in this matter."

As a market source told RBC, the Russian shareholder Jolla is the ESNGrigoria Berezkina group, whose fortune, according to Forbes magazine, is $0.6 billion (140th place in the ranking of the richest businessmen in Russia)[8]This information was confirmed by RBC representative ESN. According to him, participation in the investment round of the Finnish company is one of the latest ESN projects. The interlocutor of RBC refused to disclose the volume of investments and the share of the company received in return.

Jolla has planned cuts

November 23, 2015 it became known about the upcoming 50% staff reduction at Jolla. The reason is the inability to close the investment round. In addition, the company filed an application for[9] restructuring[9].


Restructuring

Jolla filed an application with Finnish regulators for debt restructuring and announced a temporary reduction in a significant part of the staff.

Jolla aloe phone (2014)

Anti Sarnio, chairman and founding member of Jolla, stated:

"Finnish legislation allows companies to carry out restructuring easily. This allows you to continue working and provides additional time to fulfill financial obligations. I believe the restructuring will allow Jolla to turn a profit over time. "

What number of employees are planned to be fired, the manager did not specify.


Funding failure

Restructuring is a necessary step to continue the company's activities after it was unable to attract another round of financing, Jolla said.

According to TechCrunch, the company was unable to close the financing round with a volume of $10.6 million from an unknown investor. Negotiations continued for three months, but the parties did not achieve success. The company expects to resume in December 2015.

The TechCrunch believes that every second employee of the company will be fired.

In total, Jolla raised $42 million. The last round - B, in the amount of $12.4 million, closed in December 2014.

To continue work, according to Sarnio, it is necessary to close a new round in December - it is very important for the company. Sailfish OS requires decent investment and human resources. And if Jolla does not receive funds, there is a risk of stopping work on the platform. It will be difficult to continue work on it at the current level of remaining resources.

2011: Ex-Nokia employees create Jolla

Sailfish Holding was established in the summer of 2011. Its founders were employees Nokia who refused to accept the CEO's policy Stephen Elop regarding Nokia being developed open. operating system MeeGo After his arrival in 2010, the company switched to the Windows Phone and abandoned further release on the smartphones MeeGo, and later - from further development of the platform itself.

The head of the development of Sailfish OS is Marc Dillon, a former developer of Symbian and Series 40 platforms at Nokia.

Notes

  1. LinkedInhttps ://www.linkedin.com/posts/samulisimojoki_putinin-hyökkäys-ukrainaan-pakottaa-meistä-activity-6904001201180934144-lb444d
  2. Berezkinhttps
  3.  ://www.cnews.ru/news/top/2021-12-30_vlasti_potratyat_38_milliardov
  4. the companies Votron and WMP https://www.company.rt.ru/press/news_ir/news/d443012/
  5. 83.2% of Jollahttps ://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3733374
  6. publication https ://techcrunch.com/2022/03/01/jolla-cut-ties-russia/dated
  7. An international consortium is being formed to develop a new mobile operating system
  8. They decided to create a competitor to iOS and Android in Russia.
  9. 9,0 9,1 [http://www.cnews.ru/news/top/2015-11-23_jolla_sokratit_polovinu_shtata_izza_otsutstviya debt