Rivalling Jio and Nokia, Jolla to enter India's feature-phone market
Finland-based smartphone vendor Jolla is all set to announce its second phone in the Indian market. As per reports, Jolla is about to complete negotiations with a "large telecom operator" as well as an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), to launch the v3 version-powered 4G feature phone to India with its new Sailfish OS. Here are the details.
Jolla's Sailfish OS is ready for phone manufacturers
"The feature phone is something that came to us through a customer case from India. This is something we are definitely looking forward to. The product is ready on our side, and it is now more about market operation," said Sami Pienimaki, Jolla CEO
Sailfish 3 OS will make feature phones smarter
The Jolla feature phone will run on the company's latest Sailfish v3 OS which currently supports all the major feature phone chipsets including Qualcomm's 2015 mobile platform, MediaTek and Spreadtrum processors. This independent mobile OS offers native Sailfish apps along with a few Android apps, a custom app store, support for 4G, VoLTE and a new full non-touch user experience.
Why should Jio and Nokia worry?
Considering the new Sailfish OS, a Jolla phone will offer a lot more customizations and personalized user experience, as compared to say a JioPhone or Nokia feature phone which come with pre-installed Android applications. Moreover, JioPhone, which runs KaiOS, offers support for Facebook and now WhatsApp, comes with pre-installed Jio digital content applications that many users may not need. Sailfish, on the other hand, is an open source OS.
India, the world's largest feature phone market
Jolla will directly compete with Reliance's JioPhone in the feature phone segment - a market expected to double from 18-19 million in 2017 to over 40 million in 2018. JioPhone leads the market with a 27% share, it reportedly sold nearly 12 million JioPhones in Q4 2017 alone. Then we have Samsung with a 15% market share and other growing competitors like Micromax, Nokia.
