Sailfish OS’s heritage lies in Nokia times, especially in the MeeGo operating system. Prior to 2011 Nokia and Intel had a vision of an open mobile operating system. Together they invested around 1 billion USD to the project and created an open source based operating system called MeeGo, which was used as a basis for several devices, such as the iconic Nokia N9. Although the Nokia N9 became the beacon of open source operating systems, Nokia decided to end the project and chose instead to continue with Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS. The rest of that is another story.

The passionate team behind MeeGo refused to quit working on the project they’ve believed in. They, or currently ‘we’ saved MeeGo by setting up a new company, Jolla Ltd., to develop the swipe-based MeeGo into the flowing user experience that is Sailfish OS. We quickly enhanced Sailfish OS to run Android apps and it became hardware compatible with Android chipsets. In November 2013, we launched the beta version of Sailfish OS to the market with the Jolla smartphone. Shortly after this, we released Sailfish OS version 1.0 and the first Sailfish OS product, the Jolla smartphone entered 36 markets during one year. In 2015, Sailfish OS 2.0. was released along with the Jolla Tablet, and a strengthened focus on the company’s licensing strategy.

In 2018 Sailfish OS matured to its third generation offering a packetized, secure solution for various corporate and governmental environments, and a smooth and secure mobile OS for tech-savvy consumers through the Sailfish X community program. The fourth generation, Sailfish 4, introduced in February 2021, boasts a multitude of new enablers to support different ecosystem projects, be it private corporate solutions or public sector governmental deployments.