
Jolla Outsells iPhone 5S and 5C in Finland - sirkneeland
http://www.jollausers.com/2014/01/jolla-outsells-iphone-5s-and-5c-in-finland/
======
sirkneeland
Obvious caveats:

-it is Jolla's home market of Finland

-Finland is a small market where slight changes in absolute sales volume can show significant changes

-Jolla is satisfying pent-up demand for their phone

-it is on one carrier in Finland (the only one where Jolla is offered)

-iPhone aggregate demand is split into 2 whereas there is only 1 Jolla model

But hey, a win is a win...and it is certainly better than, say, _failing_ to
outsell the iPhone on this one carrier in one country

And the Jolla also outsold high-end Nokias (only the low-end Lumia 520 outsold
the Jolla)

~~~
sentenza
True, but I personally can say that I'm very happy to hear this, as I've been
hoping for a serious contender besides Android and IOS.

I would like to have a good phone, with a non-dead app ecosystem that is sold
to me by a phone vendor as a stand-alone product without a lifestyle
template/belief system attached to it.

Until this news, Jolla was an "also ran" in my perception, now they are a
prime contender for my next smartphone. (Might also be tempted by an upper-
tier Firefox OS phone, if that ever happens.)

Maybe, just maybe, there will come a time when we have a major smartphone
company in Europe. I'm all for it.

~~~
sirkneeland
"Maybe, just maybe, there will come a time when we have a major smartphone
company in Europe _again_. I'm all for it."

(FTFY :) Ericsson pioneered with the R380, Symbian was a decent smartphone OS
for its day, and Nokia was Nokia)

I also want Europe to have a major smartphone company, and I say that as an
overtly (and possibly overly) patriotic American. Competition and choice are
good things. Duopolies are usually not good.

------
krig
I got the jolla on the 28th or so (bought mine in late November), and I've
been using it a little since. I haven't switched from my iPhone, but I do have
some impressions:

Good:

\- Sailfish OS is really nice looking, and the gestures have grown on me.
Actually, I find myself trying to perform the gestures like closing an app by
swiping down on the iPhone as well, and when it doesn't work, the iPhone feels
old and clunky.

\- The phone feels good in the hand, the back has a pleasant smooth feel. It's
nowhere as plastic as the galaxy phones, but doesn't have the weight and
solidity of the iPhone. In general, I'm happily surprised by the quality of
the hardware.

\- Terminal and SSH access is one click away.

Con:

\- There are no apps. The ones that are there (a media player, a calendar, a
mail app) are extremely bare bones. They work, but lack essential
functionality. On the plus side, they look good. Well, the browser looks a bit
iffy and some of the UI choices there are no good.

\- Android apps don't really work that well. Of the ones I've tried, only the
official Twitter app and the Youtube player really work okay. Most apps either
fail to detect network connectivity or crash. Plus, the Android apps run in a
VM, not appearing as separate apps in the sailfish UI, and are pretty
sluggish. Not a great experience.

\- The screen is not great, fonts in the browser in particular look terrible.
Hopefully this is something that can be improved (some of the fonts in
sailfish itself look great). It's not a terrible screen, but it's fairly low
resolution.

\- The camera is pretty bad. This is a bit sad, since my last maemo/meego
phone was the N900, and it had a fantastic camera for its time.

\- Wireless and 3G data are flaky, and 4G is not working at all, yet.

Right now, my impression is, despite its flaws, pretty positive. Once there
are more apps, the worst bugs are fixed and the browser is a bit more
polished, it'll be a pretty nice OS on a slightly outdated phone. If they can
get sailfish running on something like the nexus 5, I think that could be a
pretty nice choice.

~~~
smashthewindow
You use Terminal and SSH on the phone???

~~~
pessimizer
As an N900 user, probably 10 times a day. It often makes up for a lack of
hyperspecialized apps. The _only_ way I regularly get data on and off of my
phone is rsync.

~~~
giovannibajo1
Can you cite an usage that doesn't compensate for a missing feature of the
platform? iOS offers wifi sync and backup (plus cloud if you want), and there
is an ecosystem of products around it to explore/modify/share backups in the
standard format, so I don't see me running SSH for it even if I could.

~~~
boomlinde
> Can you cite an usage that doesn't compensate for a missing feature of the
> platform?

A missing feature, such as your phone not running the server that you need to
do light maintenance on?

> iOS offers wifi sync and backup (plus cloud if you want), and there is an
> ecosystem of products around it to explore/modify/share backups in the
> standard format

There is also an ecosystem of products to explore/modify/share rsync backups.
Tools like cd, mv, cp, cat, tar... Sorry if I sound harsh, but the wheel can
only be invented so many times. I agree that the iPhone backup system is a
huge convenience, but if you really want your backups in a "standard format"
you'll use a format you are sure Apple won't change at a hunch and that you
can manipulate in the same way you do your other backups.

~~~
giovannibajo1
The problem here is that UNIX tools and shell are not a solution for a generic
consumer device. So unless you are arguing that everybody should be able to
use them (in which case, I leave the discussion for not being interested in
debating the topic), you need to accept the fact that there has to be a user-
level feature for backup. At which point, unless it is badly implemented, it
is probably far easier and safe than trying to mirror with rsync your phone
and then figure out how to handle software upgrades, restores, different
partitions, separate software from data, and whatnot.

Moreover, I would add that file-based manipulation in my opinion is useful
when the single files do expose some value. If I need to backup a sqlite DB
with my contacts with rsync, I might as well use a high-level tool that offers
me much more without me having to write DB-manipulation code, for instance,
syncing/converting with the address book on my OS that might be in a different
format. On the other hand, if I edit a .odt file on a tablet, I can see a
value in directly manipulating with the shell, as that file is something that
I create and I want to access and move around.

But only a subset of the things that I want to backup are document files that
I created. If I backup the settings of my phone, I wouldn't even want to know
HOW they are stored. And assuming I found out, I don't want to be bothered to
thinking if direct file copying is the correct way to restore it on a
newer/older version of the operating system. This is a level of detail that is
beyond what _I_ (personally) want to know about a smartphone.

So, to rephrase, does the shell on a smartphone empower you to do things that
you couldn't reasonably expect to be implemented as consumer-level features?

~~~
boomlinde
> The problem here is that UNIX tools and shell are not a solution for a
> generic consumer device.

Not for every person or every problem, but people like pessimizer seem to have
found use for UNIX tools. N900 has built in functionality for backups, too,
but like the iPhone backup system I guess it's not as flexible as rsync in
combination with various other system tools.

> Moreover, I would add that file-based manipulation in my opinion is useful
> when the single files do expose some value.

Agreed.

> If I backup the settings of my phone, I wouldn't even want to know HOW they
> are stored.

To each their own, but you have to agree that its reasonable for someone else
not to share that opinion.

> So, to rephrase, does the shell on a smartphone empower you to do things
> that you couldn't reasonably expect to be implemented as consumer-level
> features?

If it enables me to run the specific software I prefer to use and otherwise
couldn't, it's by definition empowering me to do so. The answer is obvious.
It's not compensation for a missing feature of the platform; it _is_ a feature
of the platform, whether non-power users will make use of it or not

~~~
giovannibajo1
> N900 has built in functionality for backups, too, but like the iPhone backup
> system I guess it's not as flexible as rsync in combination with various
> other system tools.

It would greatly help if he/she described _how_ it is more flexible. I fail to
see it, and I regularly do server backups with rsync, so I think I know the
tool. On the contrary, my own technical evaluation is that it is a lot less
convenient that the native, builtin backup solution, especially because it
requires far more work to achieve the same, and it is going to be risky on the
face of subsequent OS updates (that might invalidate your backups without you
even realizing, unless you have another phone to regularly test your in-house
backup/restore solution).

> If it enables me to run the specific software I prefer to use and otherwise
> couldn't, it's by definition empowering me to do so. The answer is obvious.
> It's not compensation for a missing feature of the platform; it _is_ a
> feature of the platform, whether non-power users will make use of it or not

If I understand correctly, you're saying that "having SSH access" is a
feature, irrespective of how it can be used. I think everybody would agree
with this :)

Instead, what I'm trying to find out is what SSH access enables me to do, with
a specific focus on solving problems or implementing features that are not
reasonably supposed to be part of the consumer-level features offered by the
platform.

You can answer "nothing, but I still like it because I do", of course. I'm not
trying to change anyone's behavior. But after 2 years of (not) using SSH
access to my smartphone, I'm curious of how other people use it and why.

~~~
boomlinde
First of all, I can't answer for pessimizer, but I'll list some potential
advantages of using rsync. Second of all, I really need to point out that
there's a big difference between convenience and flexibility, so our technical
evaluations don't really challenge eachother.

rsync might involve more work, but on the other hand you could have a cron
scheduler trigger it at regular intervals, run by a script that only performs
a backup under the right network connectivity conditions (eg. the phone is
connected to your home or work WLAN). Perhaps you only want to back up part of
the system, or maybe you want to back up some parts of it (say, /home) more
frequently than others that are susceptible to big changes (/usr/bin?).
Perhaps the only thing you really want to back up from your phone are your
downloaded email attachements and browser downloads, while having your
contacts managed by some cloud service. You've already listed the
disadvantages of such a setup, and I agree, but the advantages need to be
acknowledged as well. The stream-lined iOS approach might be as one size fits
all as it gets, but there could still be cases where a user would reasonably
want to handle it differently.

As for what use ssh for, you are being clear now. At first I thought you meant
using an ssh client on the phone (in which case the answer would be the
generic answer to "what would I use ssh for?"), but running an sshd on your
phone could be useful as well. It's a quick and convenient way to move files
to it -- think binaries, scripts, crontabs or runit services -- and a quick
way of managing these files.

------
cdooh
I need to get my hands on one of these. I used the Maemo OS on the N900 for a
couple of years and must say I loved it(having a hardware keyboard was a plus)
I've got to say I love the community around it. Just about 40000users left on
that particular system yet some of the best support I've ever seen. The
community is incredible.

If this OS, and phone, can get that same sort of support and community around
it(and I don't see why not seeing that they're based on the same cores built
by the same teams) I see great things in the future. Like booting Ubuntu,
Jolla and Mozilla from the same phone.

~~~
barbs
This may interest you then, if you haven't already seen it:

[http://neo900.org/](http://neo900.org/)

~~~
cdooh
Wonder if I can send in broke N900 they upgrade it for me. I'll get in touch
with them

------
bertil
I worked for an iOS developer in Finland this summer; it's an amazing but
peculiar country. Some elements that might help make sense of the news:

\- those numbers are only for DNA: it was the operator that I used, great
service; it is a relevant operator on the market, but apparently not the best
for international roaming or the countryside; Helsinki coverage makes it a
preferred option for the savvy, but not the most senior crowd who travels
abroad quite a bit;

\- the tech scene is extremely tight-knight, sprung out of Nokia; most of
those have close ties to some of Jollo developers and have internal
information on the project;

\- the country is not only fairly small, it includes SuperCell, Rovio and
that’s the tip of the iceberg: dozen of thousands out of the 600k-1.3M people
living in Helsinki or around develop for mobiles; most people openly describe
how the country made a conscious, political, country-wide pivot from Nokia’s
experience in sparse mobile code to iOS games and apps; half the people there
seem to personally know game developers;

\- iPhones 5C and 5S were not available early this summer and as you can
imagine, this was a significant, professionally dire problem (on that note:
Seriously, Apple!?); people flew and came back with fistfuls of the things up
long after Finnish resellers suffered shortages; I believe that operator
subsidies on the handsets are not significant (but I can’t say for sure: as a
foreigner, I couldn’t hold a contract myself).

Because of that, I’m assuming that operator _sales_ of smartphones are a
biased sample; traffic data would be preferable for actual use. However, even
that usage is skewed: most people have a mobile platform written in bold on
their LinkedIn profile, or ask one who has before buying a handset. That they
sold significantly is a great sign however: if the product wasn’t good, local
buyers would have heard rumors before — and many people buying are actually
considering developing for the thing.

~~~
jzzskijj
> those numbers are only for DNA. Because of that, I’m assuming that operator
> sales of smartphones are a biased sample

Correct! As far as I know DNA is a tiny player compared to the biggest
operators TeliaSonera and Elisa. So these numbers don't have the handsets sold
by Jolla's store. And they don't have iPhones sold by other operators or
retailers. I think DNA numbers cover less than 10% of handset sales in
Finland.

------
xilaworp
I own a Jolla, I currenty use it as my primary phone and the real game-changer
here may be that it actually runs Android apps without any signficant problems
(so far :-)) even at this early stage (Angry Birds and Skype in my case, which
seems me like quite challenging apps to emulate, Skype video calls, for
example works).

For me this seems to invalidate the ecosystem concept underlying for example
the Nokia switch to Microsoft and making Jolla and other smaller phone makers'
chances of success a lot bigger.

~~~
lafar6502
Yeah, but why running Android apps is such a game changer? After all, most
Android phones can run Android apps too... Why would anyone want to have Jolla
and not Android?

~~~
xilaworp
The usefulness and game-changing property of the compatibility to me is that
you can buy a phone from a small startup with its own operating system and UI
and still have access to applications while you wait fot the number of phones
to grow and for Skype et. al to port their stuff to the native environment.
Without that you wouldn't necessary buy the phone and the conpany would have a
much harder time to succeeed,

Also it is good to have a way to run more exotic apps that it does not make
sense to port to a less mainstream environment.

I'm Finnish and has used Nokia Communicators since the 90s and my previous
phones was an N9 and a N900 so the main attraction is the native environment
as a continuation of Mameo/Meego and the company itself. Thankfully there is
still some Finnish companies who seems to understand how to apply 'Management
by perkele' :-)

~~~
sirkneeland
Perkele is a word that does not get used enough on HN :)

------
oscargrouch
There is a gold mine for Jolla here in Brazil:

* Big market

* Iphone is too expensive because its built outside of Brazil and have heavy taxes because of it

* Android doenst actually have a strong brand.. its good looking and the hardware is more cheap, so people buy because of the lack of options (actually to be fair, samsung is pretty good, as everybody knows) - People dont buy a phone because its a android like they do with Apple

Map for the gold mine:

* Find a good brazilian partner with good relations and well stablished in traditional industry

* Ask for money in development banks like BNDES to build a factory(or use some part of one already built) in Zona Franca de Manaus (with tax incentives) (it will be easy for a project like yours as long Jolla have well conected people here)

* Use the factory to export to other south american countries with tax incentives for exports

...

I think Brazil is a unique market to launch this things because of the unique
environment you have here..

Once Jolla made a pitch and some hits here, they can start to launch in more
saturated and sophisticated markets (read apple fanboysm here) like US and EU

Really, Jolla should be very serious about that possibility..

~~~
soapdog
Samsung, LG, Alcatel have factories in Brazil. Foxconn is building a factory
in partnership with someone and will produce apple stuff here. Even microsoft
and sony build things such as xbox and playstation here (more like assemble
but still get incentives). Simply building a Jolla factory with BNDES support
will not give them a foothold since everyone else is doing the same thing.

To succeed in the Brazilian market they need the following: * Cheap devices.
The Jolla phone is more expensive than Android competition, even higher end
devices such as Moto G. * Whatsapp support is a must in here. People will
decide against a device if it doesnt have whatsapp client. * Agreement with
some carrier to push it. * Localized stuff * Multi-sim support. Many Android
devices have two or three (and even four) simcard slots so that people can use
a simcard for each carrier and call everyone for free. There is a moto g with
dual sim in here.

Right now, IIRC, Jolla has no multi-sim support, no carrier agreement, no
cheap device. Being cheaper than iPhone is not enough, it needs to be cheaper
than ~R$300 (close to USD 130) to succeed in here.

PS: I am working on this market right now. This are trends I've been
experiencing here daily.

------
znowi
This is great. A real alternative to surveillance tainted iOS and Android.

In addition to this, there's a new Firefox OS phone coming soon (I hope).

[http://www.geeksphone.com/revolution/](http://www.geeksphone.com/revolution/)

~~~
rescripting
Just curious, why isn't BlackBerry a real alternative to surveillance tainted
iOS and Android phones?

~~~
MehdiEG
At that point, I think that Blackberry is suffering a lot from their now
disastrous brand image. It's not that Blackberry isn't a real alternative.
It's that most people aren't even considering Blackberry at all anymore.

The feeling I get is that it occurs to very few people that Blackberry could
even be an alternative. I doubt that many people would notice if they went
under tomorrow.

------
Zigurd
As others have pointed out, Jolla is the "home team" in Finland. Jolla is made
of up people formerly at Nokia. Wider success depends on shipping a great
product, but it also depends on how much people who liked the Nokia Harmattan
and Meego OS smartphones know that Jolla is the successor to those products.
Before they were thrown off the "burning platform" they outsold Windows Phone-
based products.

~~~
noinsight
Indeed, the Finnish market is pretty skewed, as far as I know, it's the only
market where Windows Mobile is @ +30% market share for smart phones (because
of Nokia loyalty).

It skews the app market too, probably no one outside of Finland cares about
Windows Mobile but in Finland supporting it is a big deal.

~~~
sirkneeland
There are some other markets where Windows Phone is in 2nd place (ahead of
iPhones) and so supporting it is indeed a big deal. Italy, some eastern
European countries, Southeast Asian countries, South America, possibly
Russia...

------
aaronbrethorst
Alternate, equally accurate headline:

'Jolla fails to outsell 3 Samsung phones, Nokia phone'

------
ommunist
Wow. When shall we see it offered at O2 and 3, and Orange and T-Mobile in the
UK? Just to gain some more stats, nothing else. Power is in numbers, right?

~~~
sirkneeland
Jolla are working on it ;) Even Apple started with one phone on one carrier to
refine the product and process and only then did they start to scale.

------
mmahemoff
All these new OSs to try out and develop for ... has anyone attempted a boot
manager for them? I'd love to have a single device rocking all the open-source
efforts - Android, FxOS, Tizen, Jolla, Ubuntu. I believe at least some of
these have been able to run on various Nexus devices, so should be possible?

I realise multi-booting isn't practical for end-users, but very useful for
developers and tech evaluators while the Cambrian explosion of mobile OSs
plays out.

~~~
mintplant
There's MultiROM for the Nexus 7: [http://forum.xda-
developers.com/showthread.php?t=2011403](http://forum.xda-
developers.com/showthread.php?t=2011403)

~~~
mmahemoff
I see, thanks. What I'm really looking for is a single image or script that
would automatically flash the device with a bundle of pre-installed OSs.
Probably doesn't exist yet.

~~~
dfgnh555
Once you have installed the modified recovery and bootloader, there's a
recovery option where you can queue up as many images as you like. There's
also a app to make things even easier:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tassadar.m...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tassadar.multirommgr)

------
wil421
Considering all of Finland is about the same population size as the metro area
I live in (Metro Atlanta), I think this is irrelevant. Also considering
Jolla's home is Finland I am sure they enjoy a pricing advantage or a sense of
pride buying something made in Finland.

That being said I would really like to see an outsider come into the US and
gain some marketshare.

~~~
sirkneeland
Pricing advantage no. Pride advantage, of course.

I would argue success in a home market may be a necessary but insufficient
precondition to "relevance" (however one defines that). They've cleared that
first hurdle. And that is to be applauded, I feel.

~~~
wil421
I wasnt sure about the pricing advantage, some would say we get one for
iPhones in the US but others say we are paying for it by getting locked into 2
year contracts.

------
gress
This is grossly misleading - it outsold the iPhone on the one operator that
carries it. Not in the entire Finnish market.

~~~
kazagistar
Well, that was indeed mentioned in the article. It outsold the iphone in the
market where it was offered... it is up to you to decide what would happen at
other carriers.

~~~
gress
For sure, but there is a good likelihood that that one carrier absorbed the
demand that would otherwise be spread across all four, in which case it
wouldn't even have ranked.

------
mafuyu
I preordered and recently paid, but I'm still stuck in the shipping queue.
Seems a bit silly to make the preorder customers wait longer, but it's
probably to get as many devices out in stores as possible.

------
badman_ting
It is worth counting total sales by platform as well as by handset.

------
jenniferk
It's hard to find info but isn't the UI and other parts closed source? If that
is the case Firefox OS and Ubuntu mobile OS look more promising.

~~~
ballard
I've done ops consulting at about half of the major handset mfgrs.

What's missing from many of the mobile open source phone projects is _ruthless
project management_. Without getting to _what customers need working most ,
first_ instead of _whatever I, dev, feel like_ can hold back any development
timeline.

Firefox OS has hope because the folks at Mozilla are sharp. I'm sure others
do, I just don't have first-hand knowledge of them to make any claims. Also,
as far as NSA backdoors, Mozilla has the least likelihood of enabling dragnet
surveillance. However it could be potentially leaned-on by Google, their
largest revenue source, but a viable, popular handset maybe a way to negate
that.

