Jolla Tablet
The Jolla Tablet as a product was the first tablet designed by Jolla running the company's Sailfish OS, a Linux-based OS built around the Mer software components.
In a successfully completed crowdfunding campaign, over US$2.5 million had been raised from 21,633 backers. After multiple issues with production, financing and schedule a small number of devices were shipped in autumn 2015, while the company stated in December 2015 that due to the non-availability of necessary components, that production was to be stopped and the remaining backers should receive a full refund. As of 23 December 2016, Jolla had still not provided a timeline to fully refund backers, stating "we will commence with that as our financial situation allows."
Prototype awarded
On the 5 March 2015, on the last day of Mobile World Congress 2015, the Jolla Tablet running with Sailfish OS 2.0, the not yet released prototype, was awarded with "The Best Tablet of the whole event" prize by Trusted Reviews. The project was unveiled and introduced during the congress for the first time publicly. It was the introduction of both: the new OS and the new product.Operating system
The tablet was designed to be a host running Sailfish OS 2.0 by Jolla. This allowed and caused significant development and major updates based on its predecessor, Sailfish OS 1.0. Fixes and upgrades counted in dozens of thousands, including :- support for new devices has become much easier
- default standard is implemented Wayland
- adaptations needed for the Intel x86 platform and chipset architecture
- further developed including more reliable touch gesture based OS navigation and operations
- homescreen completely rewritten for Sailfish OS 2.0 based on extensive UX prototypes and user studies
- redesigned Startup Wizard flow for the first-time user experience and make Sailfish OS easier to use
- higher display resolutions with bigger display dimensions
- support multiple display sizes and orientations
- browser architecture revamped for better performance and the fully redesigned interface
- apps armed with much more sophisticated error handling
- user hinting and loading indications
- completed readiness for licensing Sailfish OS to 3rd parties vendors with eventual support for designing new mobile products by 3rd parties.
Android software support
Built-in Android compatibility layer of Alien Dalvik allows the usage of software in an emulated Android environment on a Jolla Tablet, without changes to the software nor performance slow-down, as Sailfish OS and Android both use the Linux kernel. Sailfish OS multitasking capabilities allows user switching between software, both native and emulated, on the fly.Developer program
Upon community demands for a developer program, the community beta group was introduced in 2013 as an endeavor to collect feedback from the community. After that, there was an invite-only pilot phase for the Jolla Tablet Developer Device loan program. The aim of this program was to gather feedback in the form of failure reports and suggestions for better process. The developers were hand-picked based on their technical contributions to Sailfish OS. Active community members were to provide appropriate feedback during the pilot phase to serve the program's expansion in the future. A number of loan devices were shipped to selected developers with an early access to the SDK and tablet software release, which at that time had not been made public.Crowdfunding campaign
On 19 November 2014, Jolla started a crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo to fundraise US$380,000 needed to release the device, with an offer to pre-order devices at a discount if the goal was achieved. The first lot of 1000 tablets, at the price of US$189, sold out within three hours of the campaign's opening. Within less than 24 hours the campaign reached US$1,089,378 and by the closure of the campaign on December 9 reached US$2,571,382 from 21,633 backers. Announced was released in the EU, Norway, Switzerland, USA, India, China, Hong Kong, Russia in July 2015, with a release in other countries to follow. On the third day of the campaign, Australia and Canada were announced as additional countries the device would ship to. China was originally also part of this campaign, but due to undisclosed licensing reasons Jolla had needed to drop China from the list. There were not many backers from China, and they were offered a refund in spring 2015.The company explained, that about half of the crowdfunded money had been spent on Sailfish 2.0 OS software development as required were adaptations to a completely new chipset and hardware platform and it is Sailfish 2.0 performance that makes a device the Jolla Tablet, so in consequence a big part of the project was focused on this.
Release
The original delivery date for the tablet was stated to be May 2015, but had been delayed several times. Jolla had started preorders for the tablet via its website on 20 August 2015. On 19 November 2014 a crowdfunding campaign started and was completed successfully, raising more than US$2.5 million by December 9. From ordered production batches a few hundreds of devices were shipped in autumn 2015. After issues with both financing and supplier the company stated in December 2015, that the production was cancelled. The remaining Indiegogo backers were to receive a full refund. In total, less than 1000 tablets had been shipped by the company.Troubles with manufacturing and suppliers
Soon after the Indiegogo campaigns Jolla experienced severe issues with component deliveries and with the display quality. In August–September 2015 as the pre-order campaign for the Jolla Tablet was started, Jolla stated it was confident it could start deliveries according to the revised project schedule. In October, the first batch of 121 tablets shipped to test the order and logistics chain.Meanwhile, Jolla's supplier had its own issues and had to change factories twice for production, again affecting the schedule. Project delays also had a severe impact on budgets and caused “cycle of events” which led the project into serious trouble.
Jolla entered into company-wide financial trouble as financing round C was unexpectedly delayed in late autumn 2015. The initial impact was that Jolla could not pay subcontractors, causing more delays. The financing delay resulted in a fight for the survival of the whole company, not just only the Tablet Project.
In December 2015, long-awaited financing finally arrived, but at that point the company had already been hit hard and in order to continue had been forced to apply for debt-restructuring in Finland. It temporarily laid off a large part of organization. This further impacted the Jolla Tablet project.
Despite these problems Jolla declared, “This was just one death valley we had to pass through”.
The tight financial situation remained a major constraint and the main factor determining the ultimate outcome. Owing to the delays in the financing round it had become too late to produce all the tablets for the project as the supplier no longer had the necessary components and many of them were no longer available. According to Jolla there was nothing that could be done to change this.
Jolla Tablets in China out of Jolla control
Unpaid devices
When Jolla's financial situation stabilized in December 2015 meanwhile in China, there was a 2nd batch of tablets waiting, already produced but left unpaid. The manufacturer had placed these under forward sales due to delayed payments, since then Jolla had not any official status. When the financial situation allowed, Jolla could buy back 540 devices from the manufacturer, but the factory had already started forwarding tablets precisely from that batch to other retailers. Some had been sold forward already and despite Jolla efforts to repurchase from the manufacturer it was not possible to get back already sold equipment.Free sale
Jolla Tablets had been sold elsewhere via Taobao with both Sailfish OS and Android operating systems installed. Those 400 devices were initially ordered by Jolla, but after having been sold, Jolla lost control over them. Jolla worked to get these back, but had no agreements directly with the retailers. This also meant the tablets do not have official support or access to Jolla Store. System updates are uncertain depending on what changes have been made to these tablets. Also, sellers were informed they have more devices than mentioned, only 400 of which can be from the legitimate batch manufactured for Jolla. Others can be, or were, produced illegally or with completely different specification. Hence Jolla warned "there are no guarantees if the devices are now similar or not" and stressed Jolla doesn't guarantee these. There is additional risk when buying a look-a-like, e.g. Aigo X86 or Ango Tablet with MIUI installed or other similar devices with edited UI to look much like Sailfish OS. Despite the risk, there were reportedly devices that worked correctly with installed Sailfish OS 1.0.3.0, not the proper version. Some devices were successfully updated to version 2.0 as Sailfish makes this technically possible. China continuously remains a part of Jolla's BRICS strategy, and Jolla can only adjust future activities to prevent such issues from reoccurring.Getting closure crowdfunding and efforts for resolving the tablet project situation
Considering the above Antti Sarnio in the name of Jolla has declared they intend to do the following:- Ship remaining Tablets to Indiegogo backers: "we will ship 540 units as soon as we can starting from February. "
- Refund the remaining Indiegogo contributors: Jolla aims to refund the total contribution, including shipping and all accessories. Due to the financial constraints this will happen in two parts: half of the refund will be done during Q1/2016, and the other half within a year, financial situation permitting.