Suggestion: Make the Jolla a true mobile Linux computer

asked 2015-02-16 03:43:23 +0200

00prometheus
13308 ●135 ●174 ●152

updated 2015-02-16 16:04:15 +0200

I have had a feeling for a long time about a tug-of-war in the design and marketing of the Jolla. It is strongly marketed as having an open source OS that is secure from the prying eyes of Big Powers(tm). This has attracted a strong following among coders and tinkerers. At the same time, it is clear that the Jolla wants to create an OS directed mainly to a wide audience. This creates a drive towards a device the 'Just Works' and is pretty and shiny.

Now, the way I see it, these two goals are by no means mutually exclusive, however I can't shake the feeling that Jolla is leaning more towards the general public than the developers group.

There is always the obvious advantage of directing yourself to a larger market rather than a smaller one ("increase just one percent market share in this huge market and we make a lot more phones"), but I think that idea is faulty at the moment. The general phone and tablet market is totally saturated by very heavy hitters, and market share there is completely controlled by how much is spent on marketing. That is an arena where Jolla just can not compete - they simply don't have the capital muscle to make even a miniscule 1% dent. No matter how good a user experience the Jolla has, it is not inherently so much better than iOS or Android that it can make any advance in the general phone market. Even a company like Microsoft is making slow progress; they will eventually market themselves into a reasonable share, but the cost of doing so is staggering!

There is a saying: "It is better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond". If you can find a space where you can dominate - even if it is smaller, it is much better than loosing in a bigger space. The space where Jolla is in position to dominate - I would even say that they are the lead player right now - is the "Linux distros on mobile devices" space. Linux distros are able to support reasonably large companies, like Redhat, Suse and Canonical, and once you get to being a company the size of Redhat (with more than 7000 employees) you are clearly in a better position to attack the general mobile market than Jolla is now.

So rather than gunning for the end-game directly - a play I think is completely doomed - I would like to see Jolla working its way up, step by step, through markets of increasing size. They shouldn't loose sight of the end goal, keep the OS nice and friendly for the casual user, but make really, really sure that it is perfectly right for the market you are currently targeting!

So my suggestion is to take a page from the Nokia N900 marketing. Do not think of the Jolla as a mobile phone. Think of it as a true mobile Linux computer! Do not think of Sailfish OS as primarily a platform to build a popular phone experience on, think of it primarily as a Linux distribution! To do that, you must think of the difference between what makes a popular mobile phone and what makes a popular Linux distribution - and if Jolla thinks hard about that difference, including assigning people with deep experience on the two aspects, I think the twist will go more in the direction of the market they can take right now, rather than the hazy future market they want in the end game.

Update just to clarify: I am not looking to limit the Jolla to coders only. I am talking about putting focus on the coders' market. What I am suggesting isn't a radical course change, it is merely continuing in the same direction but changing the view's focus to what is close by, rather than the distant future. The "Mobile Computer Linux Distro" is an immediately attainable market, one where Jolla already has a strong position. Grasping that market whole-heartedly and exploiting its full potential is a quick win. So I am not saying that Jolla should let the phone/tablet capabilities slide; Jolla makes phones and tablets and they need to work - this is true even when coders buy them, it is after all the primary purpose of the device. What I am saying is that the developer capabilities can not play second fiddle. The shell experience needs to be as excellent as the rest of the experience. Jolla out-of-the box doesn't even have man-page support right now! If given a choice, how many geeks would keep that distro installed on their computer for more than five minutes?

We are coders, so when forced to we can fix the issues we have, but do we feel that the device is for us? No - it creates the feeling that we are allowed into a system that is really intended for someone else. That is the sense I would like to change.