Jolla enter the “death valley”. Big job cuts and debt restructuring ahead

I had a really good talk with the Chief Information Officer at Jolla last year. Stefano Mosconi was an open and honest guy and the handsets that the company produce are really rather impressive. It’s an approach and attitude which seems to run through the entire company during all my subsequent interviews.
Jolla enter the death valley. Big job cuts and debt restructuring ahead

However, today brings some rather bad news for the company. They freely admit that they’re tumbling into a “death valley” and are facing a “great challenge”. Reading through the lines of their statement (below) it seems that they’ve burned a lot of cash on developing the Sailfish OS and now need to lay off a large part of their staff (which, by the sounds of it, are developers) so that the company can continue. 
Jolla enter the death valley. Big job cuts and debt restructuring ahead

Although they call this cut in staff a “temporary” measure, the press release is, as I’ve grown to expect from speaking to Jolla on many occasions, brutally honest. Antti Saarnio, Chairman and Co-founder of Jolla tells us…

Sailfish OS is in great shape currently and it is commercially ready. Unfortunately the development until this point has required quite a lot of time and money. To get out of this death valley we need to move from a development phase into a growth phase. At the same time we need to adapt our cost levels to the new situation. One of the main actions is to tailor the operating system to fit the needs of different clients. We have several major and smaller potential clients who are interested in using Sailfish OS in their projects.

Their financing round has been put on hold and they’re instead filing for a debt restructuring programme. It’s hoped that this will secure the future of the company along with the cut in staff numbers. Those losing their jobs will be notified almost immediately, as lay offs begin in December.

Sad times.