Jolla aims to revitalise MeeGo

Finnish start-up Jolla Ltd has announced that it aims to continue "the excellent work that Nokia started with MeeGo". Despite having one MeeGo-based phone, the critically applauded N9, on the market, Nokia is committed to developing Windows Phone based devices now. This has left the descendant of Nokia's Maemo mobile operating system, which was merged with Intel's Moblin to create MeeGo, at a developmental loose end.

But now Ex-Nokia team members, along with Jolla CEO Jussi Hurmola (Nokia's former Director for MeeGo Computers Releases and Integration) and COO Marc Dillon (previously the principal engineer for MeeGo at Nokia), have joined forces with other MeeGo experts and international investors to design, develop and market new MeeGo-based smartphones.

Jolla will be competing with the successor to the Meego project, Tizen, which is being sponsored by Samsung and Intel. The company says that, since the end of 2011, Jolla Ltd and its partners have been developing a new smartphone product, along with their operating system, which is reported to combine parts of the MeeGo OS (based on the MeeGo fork Mer) and Qt with a "brand new UI" developed by Jolla.

At the time of writing, the company's official web site jolla.fi seems to be non-functioning and only very little information about the company is available.

(fab)