Finnish startup smartphone maker Jolla has sold out of its first run Sailfish OS smartphones the company has announced (pdf). The device was initially available to customers in only a few countries, before the company eventually cast its net wider, receiving orders from customers in 136 countries. First revealed in May, Jolla says that it expects to have the $515 devices in customer's hands before the end of 2013 with a second allotment being prepped for pre-order this August.
Although the company hasn't revealed exactly how many sales its first tranche pre-order sales amount to, a company spokesman said, "Our view on the size of the production batch for a mobile device vendor of this size is typically 50,000 units." Although 50,000 smartphone sales does not amount to much compared to the big players like Apple and Samsung, it does represent a gross total of nearly $26 million dollars, which bodes for a promising start for the company.
The Jolla and Sailfish OS project rose from the ashes of Nokia's abandoned MeeGo OS project following current Nokia CEO Stephen Elop's decision to drop it in favor of the Microsoft Windows Phone OS. It builds on the MeeGo basis, and has evolved the interface an UI to reflect a more contemporary design language. However, unlike the original MeeGo OS, the Sailfish operating system supports Android applications, giving the device a much wider appeal out of the box. The company also released a cross-platform SDK, for developers interested in creating native apps for the new operating system.