Rating: CEO talks a lot but no handset materialises
Ooredoo
Perhaps one of the biggest disappointments for us here @ GoMobile Towers was the fact that whilst Mozilla’s Firefox benefitted from Samsung and Telefonica’s announcements @ MWC, no such luck for Sailfish fans. All the company behind Sailfish, Jolla, did was to announce the availability of the first Sailfish OS Software Development Kit (SDK). However, Jolla’s CEO, Marc Dillon, did a lot of prominent speaking. He should have given a keynote speech on the topic of Mobile as a Platform for Innovation today [February 28th 2013].
Previously Dillon took part in a debate on the need for meaningful innovation with speakers from Mozilla and Ubuntu.
In the debate, Dillion claimed, “If we are in a competition, then we’ve already won because it’s about creating diversity from the existing walled garden and the existing couple of ecosystems [Apple's & Google's].”
He continued, “We need to provide choice, people can only buy what is offered to them and at the moment we are kind of stuck.”
If you’re a developer hoping to create apps with Sailfish you’re kind of stuck too.
The released Sailfish SDK is based on QtCreator, the Mer project’s build engine and offers an emulator for the OS.
But it only runs on 32 or 64 bit Linux and those with Windows or the Mac OS still have to wait.
Plus, whilst the underlying OS is Open source (and has its roots in MeeGo), the Sailfish UI doesn’t appear to be open.
Meanwhile fans of Tizen (which is another successor to MeeGo) could see the OS demonstrated at MWC on a Samsung-designed reference phone.
The first Tizen handsets are expected to appear in the guise of a number of Samsung devices to be launched this year [2013].
Whilst we are on the subject of big mistakes, we think that Qtel’s decision to rebrand itself as Ooredoo is up there with the greats. We wonder if it is the same team that advised on the Everything Everywhere name?
Although the new name reflects the word ‘I want’ in Arabic, we think Qtel is going to regret this.
A bit like a prominent handset manufacturer which has spent ages burying the fact that it was once called Lucky Goldstar.
And as for the Ooredoo promo pic, well it’s just plain weird.
