Jolla Confirms MeeGo App Store Is Coming 66
DavidGilbert99 writes "Jolla Mobile's MD, Jussi Hurmola has confirmed that its first smartphone will be backed up by an app store at launch later this year — pointing out that a version of Angry Birds is already available on MeeGo. And really, all you need to make an app store successful is Angry Birds, right?"
The interview from which the article is sourced has more information on Jolla's general strategy, including their plans to become "a major player."
Re:A teaching moment, necessary but not sufficient (Score:4, Informative)
As one of the people who developed the MeeGo predecessor Maemo, I feel I have to point out that there are currently 1723 applications on my-meego.com MeeGo Harmattan software catalog. I consider this fairly well for OS where only single phone has been publically released, and has been orphaned since the get-go. Most of them are not fart-generators either, although there's a fairly high number of what are essentially custom RSS feed-readers for private feeds (there's an RSS reader built-in which feeds straight to one of the home screens).
Of course the beautiful thing as far as software ecosystem is concerned is MeeGo is pretty much full featured Linux desktop, so that almost any Linux desktop software (minus high-end games of course) can be ported to MeeGo, usually at most requiring porting the UI to Qt and touch-friendly. (Of course it's nice to see lot more thought put to integrating most apps into the MeeGo system).
Re:A teaching moment, necessary but not sufficient (Score:4, Informative)
Apps are, of course, preferable way unless you're an unix admin. But on Maemo and MeeGo both, the underlying system is fairly complete "desktop" Linux. My N9's /usr, /usr/bin, /sbin and /usr/sbin directories have 1015 commands total, so I won't list everything that is included. Fully featured busybox build with ifconfig is included though. For N9, "developer mode" comes as standard option you can turn on from configuration menu, which will among other things add a console app to the device, as well as opening VNC or ssh connection to the device over USB or WLAN. What is annoying, and a slight warning for the home-hacker, is that N9 comes with kernel-backed Aegis security system, which means that unless you change the kernel or take other measures, changing ANY system files will brick the device so that a full re-flash over USB is needed. It's possible to disable, and allows installing uncertified apps, but a pain in the ass.
Päivän kasvo (Score:5, Informative)
Here's my quick translation of the Päivän kasvo [areena.yle.fi] clip if you want to know what Jussi said there about a week ago.
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Miia Lahti: The face of today is Jussi Hurmola, CEO of Jolla.
Jussi Hurmola: Thanks for taking me to the show.
ML: Jussi Hurmola wrote to Twitter in Saturday that MeeGo is not dead. That ignited an avalanche that has kept the CEO more than busy. What this all is about, is that ex-Nokians are continuing developing the MeeGo phone, that being the exact MeeGo which Nokia abandoned from the way of Windows phone. Jussi Hurmola, you probably predicted a follow up to your tweet, but was it a surprise to what it all has lead? Phone is ringing non-stop.
JH: Well, it was a total surprise. We expected some interest to MeeGo from the world, and wanted to say that MeeGo is not dead, as MeeGo was in other news last week. But the response to all this has been amazing. At about 1PM Saturday we put out first one-liner "MeeGo is not dead" and after 15 minutes the first article about it was already written, even though we hadn't done much else with it. Since then we have pretty much followed the others' lead and during Saturday evening just had to reveal something about us. The speculation was rising and people demanded information. There was already an article about us in the Wall Street Journal and you just can't prepare for something like that. I thank about all the positive feedback we have got in Twitter and, really am surprised about this.
ML: So there is a lot of interest outside the borders of Finland?
JH: Absolutely! Almost...well...I'm starting to boast a bit here... English media, Chinese media, Russian media, our little news item has got a really wide coverage.
ML: We all are probably interested about how Nokia has reacted to this.
JH: Yep! As you mention Nokia, and many have been asking, I really have to send a thank you to them. I myself have had a 12 year career at Nokia and I have colleagues that have been 25 years on that path. Currently about half of our group is from Nokia. Nokia had this Bridge project by which we cooperated to make sure people from Nokia don't fall into oblivion but can continue working. Thanks for that! And a little thing we heard from Nokia today was that there is room for both firms. So I am pleased.
ML: Were they aware at Nokia that you were going to continue the development?
JH: Well, it was the project at Nokia to start new companies. We pulled it together and information went both ways. Yet looking forward at the timeline, we didn't expect the huge interest in Saturday and we'll see where we are going next. But we have been open to each other.
ML: So how can a small 50 person company like Jolla be bold enough to begin developing a smartphone?
JH: That's a good question. Just like the name Jolla (dinghy) says, we are navigating a little boat to the open seas. There we are among big players and we can't be small anymore. We try to build big enough base for Jolla to redeem its place within this industry. How I see Jolla's position, we are the company that makes possible in this world time, and its state, and the state of technology, to really create something new and important. That is how I see Jolla. And we are company of 50 for sure, but we have 6,000 followers in Twitter right now. Aside the market situation, the industry has changed in a way that you can buy lots of components off-shelf. Reference implementations for hardware...there's all sorts of Internet services. So you can assemble it together really quickly. Absolutely not are we starting everything from zero.
ML: You said you are about to create something new. Can you uncover any of that?
JH: If we talk about devices, I'm not ready to reveal details about them. Later this year we are going to present the line-up. We are a bit careful, as we want to deliver the things we promise. The new things we are doing here - someone knows MeeGo, some don't - but we are to deliver complet