Jolla Promotes Sailfish OS to BRICS Countries to Counter Android and iOS

The Finnish developer Jolla announced an extension of its strategy to the BRICS countries to promote its flagship operating system Sailfish.

Jolla's Linux-based Sailfish OS is marketed as a more flexible alternative to the dominant platforms of Android and iOS. Now as its reiteration Sailfish 2.0 will be released this year, the Finnish company embarked to strengthen its marketing strategy to BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries.

The company's objective for the announcement is to drive Sailfish OS usage initially at the South Africa. This movement will continue to other African countries if Jolla amasses local companies to adopt its platform. "The objective is to offer one mobile platform for all BRICS countries, and create regional solutions by integrating local services to them," Jolla said in a statement.

Jolla's marketing push is a similar strategy ventured by Mozilla for its Firefox OS.

"We are integrating local ecommerce players' services and digital media companies' services into the user interface in a premium position in the surface OS. And that's what we are offering in all the BRICs countries, basically, said Jolla chairman Antti Saarnio in an interview with TechCrunch.

Saarnio detailed that a partnership between Internet companies was employed to Russia. In India, however, Jolla has been negotiating with the country and will be making announcements soon regarding some collaborated projects.

Jolla is partnering with the co-founder of South African carrier Cell-C, Dr. Sello Rathete, to create the Sailfish Africa consortium. The objective for Sailfish Africa is to gather a group of African investors to develop an independent Sailfish OS based mobile ecosystem for the said country.

With Jolla's inclination to rival with Android and iOS, Saarnio went on to explain that Jolla's Sailfish has "localization," which doesn't exist on other dominant platforms. He also urged local device vendors to try an independent operating system that is not limited by any big player in the market.

The Sailfish 2.0 will be released sometime this summer.