Jolla Gets New Investment

Jolla Bags $12.4M Series B From Europe And Asia For Its Sailfish Mobile OS

Buoyed by a successful crowdfunding campaign to build an open source tablet running its Sailfish OS, Finnish mobile startup Jolla has also announced the closure of a Series B funding round.

A Jolla spokesman confirmed to TechCrunch that the size of the round is €10 million ($12.4M) but said it’s not disclosing who has invested. He did say that around half of the funding has come from European investors, and the other half from Asia.

Jolla has previously taken in multiple millions in external funding, including €1 million when Hong Kong-based firm China Fortune took a 6.25 per cent stake — back in February 2013.

Non-disclosure of investors.

That makes me wonder if Alibaba’s Jack Ma and/or Xiaomi’s Lei Jun put in some cash. It’d make sense for them to hedge their bets on another OS.

Jolla is really going to have to nail their tablet. It has to be just about complaint-free to excite people, attract new buyers, and entice developers.

Meanwhile, the Jolla tablet will be officially available in Italy next year [Google Translate].