First Real Alternative to iPhone and Android

Sailfish (Photo credit: Brian Auer)

Mashable reports that a First Real Alternative to iPhone and Android is emerging. Jolla, a Finnish startup, launched a new mobile OS called Sailfish, which the company believes will become a legitimate alternative to the Coke and Pepsi of smartphone platforms: Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

While the user interface is critical for a new mobile operating system, getting developers on-board is just as important. Jolla has been building its SDK to support smartphones, which consists of Mer Core’s tools, Qt Creator, Jolla UI components, Sailfish UI framework and Sailfish handset application interfaces.

If contributors wish to add support to open standards, they are encouraged to share it with the community to help build the Sailfish OS.

Sailfish’s open nature will ensure that it can support Android applications. Jolla explains:

Many Android applications will run on Jolla devices unchanged. If you want to take advantage of all UI and other features of Sailfish OS and make yourapplications fast, you can port your applications to native QT/QML.

It’s a good start for Jolla, now it has to deliver.