The Jolla Tablet was not the reason for its financial issues

Nov 24, 2015 11:55 GMT  ·  By

As many of you probably know by now, Jolla is in deep financial troubles. The Finnish company announced a few days ago that it had to temporarily lay off more than half of its staff to survive.

Today, Jolla's co-founder and Chairman of the Board, Antti Saarnio published an open letter to the community, in which he explains why the company is now going through such rough times and what needs to be done in the future to survive.

According to Saarnio, Jolla has had two death-valleys until this year, one in early 2013 when it lost its entire technology platform, and the second in late 2014 when its first smartphone was not selling as anticipated.

The third death-valley happened this month when Jolla's lead investor had withdrawn from the November financing round (total size of around €10M investment).

Since the company did not manage to secure the amount needed for the company's survival during the month of November, it had to temporary lay off some of its personnel and apply for debt restructuring, which is a Finnish program similar to Chapter 11.

Jolla Tablet project costs were used for the development of Sailfish OS

Jolla hopes that these decisions are just temporary and that with a successful financing round in December, the company will be saved from further complications.

The Finnish company also reiterates that the Jolla Tablet project is not the reason for its financial issues, even though more than 50% of the project costs have been invested in the development of the Sailfish OS, not for the tablet's manufacturing.

“Also I would like to highlight that the tablet project is not the reason for Jolla’s current financial challenges, but the delay of company’s overall external financing,” explains Antti Saarnio.

Those who financed Jolla Tablet project on Indiegogo and did not receive their tablets will need to wait for the Finnish company to find ways to solve these issues and compensate customers.

“Meanwhile we are heavily working to get our funding in place in December we are also analyzing different alternatives to solve the Tablet project and compensate to our customers for the late or missing deliveries. Please stay tuned while we are figuring these solutions out,” added Saarnio.

Jolla Tablet costs
Jolla Tablet costs

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Jolla's open letter to community
Jolla Tablet costs
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