More good news for Jolla and Sailfish. On the Finnish carrier DNA, the only carrier currently selling the device, Jolla outsold the iPhone 5S, 5C, Galaxy S4, and every Lumia except the 520. Jolla ended up as number five, preceded by the Lumia 520 in fourth place, the Galaxy SIII 4G in third, and two cheap Galaxy phones as two and one. Sales cover the holiday period.
Of course, with Finland having a small population and Jolla having the home team advantage, this isn’t exactly representative for, well, anything, but it’s still impressive and good news for the young platform. The fact that Jolla outsold the flagships of iOS, Android, and Windows Phone holds promise for the future. On top of that, out of that top five, the Jolla is the most expensive phone (save for perhaps the Galaxy SIII).
I’m curious to see if they’ll be able to maintain this momentum. It’s not going to be easy.
I just read an 8 pages article on Tweakers.net about Jolla where they actually cover the OS (and more) that was written by a guy that borrowed the phone for a few days.
I now read a few lines of “article” about a phone that is now in 5th place on 1 provider in 1 country on a site that is called OSNews by a guy that actually owns that phone.
I love reading this website but these Jolla-this, Jolla-that articles really make you seem like a fanboy. We want your review, not these salesfigures without…you know…actual amount of sales. For all I know they just sold a few hundreds because it is a really tiny provider?
Edited 2014-01-03 11:30 UTC
DNA is one of the biggest operators in Finland.
Whilst this is technically true, we’re not exactly talking about a huge number here. 25% marketshare and 2.3 million subscriber or so?
I don’t really know what you’re trying to argue here. I don’t know actual numbers, but even 20% of the whole market-share is a lot, IMHO. What would be “a huge number” then? Does any of the operators over there control “a huge number” of the market?
Maybe you’re trying to argue that a few million people isn’t a lot, but then you’d be comparing apples and oranges; we’re talking about Finland’s internal market, not some global market, and in that retrospect a few million people is a lot.
The article says that the numbers are not representative of ‘anything’ but then contradicts itself and hopes the momentum continues. The numbers are not representative of anything, including momentum.
Just because we have seen some small evidence that you can get a bump in your own country doesn’t change the overriding truth that OS markets are world markets.
Review of the OS is of tremendous interest to me. reports of its sales in Finland, of interest to me…I am easy….but I see what the guy is saying. There is an attempt here to overstate the importance of sales.
I’ll remember that for the next time an American company boasts about their domestic sales (which will probably happen sometime in the next 5 seconds).
America is a much bigger country. It got the iPhone moving.
And you’ll get it. However, don’t forget that OSNews is a hobby, not a job; I actually have a full-time job that takes up a lot of time, and, you know, it’s been the holiday season, which I like to spend with family and friends.
Patience.
I found a better source for this same news: http://mynokiablog.com/2014/01/02/jolla-outsells-iphone-5s-and-5c-a…
From what I found Elisa is the nr. 1 provider and DNA is the nr. 3. Elisa’s best selling phones were Nokia’s (8/10) and they don’t sell Jolla.
DNA sells Jolla but only had 1 Nokia in there top 10 and that is the very cheapest one (520).
My conclusions:
* Finish people like to buy Finish products
* Finish people are upset with Nokia. When they want a midrange phone they buy Jolla when they have the choice and ignore Nokia
* Finish people can still be opportunistic enough to buy Nokia when it is cheap.
I know nothing about the Finish market, so please educate me.
I am very much awaiting your review. The Tweakers review gave them a lot of credit for trying but basically slaughtered the phone while staying polite about it:
* High-end price, low-end screen and battery life (NFC-bug?)
* Can run Android apps but with quite a few issues (no notification support) and performance is acceptable but quite a bit lower than comparable hardware and MUCH lower than comparably priced phones like the Nexus 5
* The resolution is low, there are no animations but still the display isn’t smooth and text looks bad
* …but they show promise and impress???????
This is the Dutch review: http://tweakers.net/reviews/3351/jolla-met-sailfish-os-nokias-erfge…
I think that was fixed just recently. At least the issue was found and there are steps for fixing it on the Internet.
Eh, that would be “Finnish”, not “Finish”. The latter is a different thing. 🙂
It probably won’t happen, but if Jolla overtakes Windows Phone as the third platform, I will mock every WP fanboy I come across on the internet.
We are supposed to believe that the role of the third platform axiomatically belongs to Windows Phone. Truth is, Symbian had the 3rd largest market share (I am not talking about installed base, but sales), even after Nokia announced the transition to WP, and they had to kill Symbian (=the announcement support will end by 2016) to dethrone it off the third spot, so WP can take it. And that is, after huge marketing campaigns for WP (Symbian had practically none after the transition announcement, and kept selling better than WP before they killed it).
Edited 2014-01-03 15:32 UTC
And who exactly will give Jolla the capital investment they’d need to compete on that scale? Microsoft has very deep pockets and (thanks to Nokia) very entrenched carrier relations (they have carrier billing in more countries than Android for example) as well as an established ecosystem with more developers (and developer intent) than Jolla could ever muster.
What gives Jolla the engineering talent to bootstrap an ecosystem to go toe to toe with any of the existing players? What’s to say they can even hit China in time to make a splash, especially when it looks like 2014 will be the year of the Chinese OEMs pushing mega volumes in a increasingly commoditized market?
I mean, lets be realistic here. The OS looks fantastic, the phones look nice, and the effort is awesome (especially since its a shipping phone with QML, Wayland, oFono, etc which rocks) but this is a cut throat industry and frankly Jolla is made possible by Nokia’s bridge project for ex-employees, future funding isn’t a given, and they don’t have loads of cash waiting for something that might never catch on.
If Finland was the size of China and they enjoyed great local sales there, then great. For now its just good news, but pretty much a token victory.
OK, just a wild speculation. But do you think it is possible, that it could be Nokia themselves, once they are allowed to again produce cell phones, who produces Sailfish based ones? 🙂
It would depend, Nokia sold off a lot of their competency with the D&S sale.
It would depend on where Jolla is a few years down the road. Do they become BBRY or Palm, do they get bought out by a Chinese vendor like Lenovo, or do they become a nice niche player, and live on vicariously through open source much like MeeGo did through Mer.
I also have to wonder if Nokia will venture down the At/home grown Linux road again or if they’ll roll with Android (easier to get chipset drivers without forking out absurd sums of money, excluding libhybris).
And then of course the question is, does Nokia even want to do phones in 2016? Can they ever catch up, is it worth it ?
Will they launch another product category (wearable, TV, you name it) and buy Jolla for that much like LG did with webOS?
Too soon to tell which way the market trends will go, but I don’t discount Nokia having some cool ass consumer device somewhere in R&D that could use a nice OS.
That’s my personal delusional prediction. It would be very poetic.
Jolla is a tiny company comparing to the market dominators; and that makes their product more amazing yet: They were able to construct a fine phone (all the reviews I have read talk a lot of good things about it) with less budget and less people.
I think their goals are not being the first or second in the market but to be an option for people that want to have the nice UX they are bringing on.
If they are able to have a ROI and are able to grow, I think they will be accomplish their goals.
Yes, but Sailfish wasn’t completely created at Jolla with Jolla’s funds. Its basically running off of the blueprint that Nokia had for Meego. Which makes sense because the people at Jolla were those people who came up with the blueprint at Nokia.
I hope they do well, I really do, but recently events have shown me how expensive and difficult it is to compete as a handset and os vendor. I wish them good luck, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they fail in the larger marketplace.
All reviews I’ve seen say that Jolla phone is way overpriced for what it offers…
They also say that the UX based on gestures is a bit confusing, easy to make non-intended gesture.
As if that isn’t the case for every smart phone produced with the worst offender being Apple.
No, Jolla is specifically compared unfavourably with other smartphones on the market… (the screen resolution of Jolla in particular is that of a low end smartphone, while the pricetag is up there)
I’d have to agree. Not so much due to the engineering talent or the connections, but the deep pockets that are required. Paying for inventory to be created for each model is going to be expensive and risky. See Blackberry and their write offs, or Microsoft and the Surface write offs.
Not even HP had the guts to do it when they had Palm.
What if Nokia secretly (or no) financed them to overcome its contractual restrictions coming from MS deal while
Dream on.
If they sell world-wide, with phones available in shops to pick rightaway like there counter-parts, it would happen just like they beat out all Lumia in the same price-segment on DNA.
Taken the small size of the company they have plenty time to grow step by step to reach that goal. The more near target is to be profitable doing so. Something Nokia never managed with Lumia (and Microsoft with WP) while Jolla may pass that milestone soon.
Edited 2014-01-03 16:32 UTC
No it won’t happen. Windows Phone is on a solid track. Another year of application introduction on Windows Phone and they are going to be able to maintain a solid third place platform.
What solid track is that? Trying to reach the 5% mark..?
Crossing double digit share in many regions, increasing volumes significantly, rapidly expanding ecosystem getting big name apps, etc
Some of you would rather have a root canal than give Microsoft a little credit.
Credit will be given where needed. MS arent there yet… Giving away phones arent really showing much is it?
They’re not giving away phones, you’re making things up. As usual.
Not that i expect you would even try but i would like to you show me where i have made something up…
If you look at this site you will see that some people have mentioned that they had been offered a wp8 mobile for free with a cheap ass contract.
I unlike you don’t have to make stuff up. Nor do i have to manipulate numbers by taking them out of context to show “trends”… You know that huge uptake you talked about the last couple of years that now has given ms ~5% of the global marked.
Carrier subsidies do not a free phone make. Sorry. But yeah, your sample size of OSNews sure does seem rock solid.
I contemplated even responding to this foolishness at all. Its quite obvious you don’t know what you’re talking about and are nothing more than a pest, very fitting given your handle.