Why doesn’t Jolla lobby Indian government for SailfishOS release?

General
#1

Indian central government has been making headlines around the world for wanting to release its own operating system for mobile devices since last year. Just a few days ago, they released a fork of an Android called BharOS (Bharat, Hindi name for India). It’s just another garbage AOSP project released by a bunch to disrupt Google and Apple duopoly in the market that offers nothing new and useful for 99.999999999% of the humanity.

My question is why isn’t Jolla lobbying Indian government or prominent Indian companies to release their software to Indian public? It could offer them an access to Indian market and put them on the map and give them much needed recognition. I mean what could go wrong when making this deal? Jolla tried to collaborate with the worlds’ largest country. They might as well consider collaborating with Indian government and companies for making an alternative revenue stream.

As far as I know, Indian subcontinent could offer the much needed app boost for Sailfish AppStore and OS itself. Why are these lazy people running this corporation are so afraid of entering Indian market? You’ve got an open source operating system. Let the Indian subcontinent have it. You might as well find the fertile ground to grow from there.

[After approaching the author, this post was edited by a community moderator to remove pejorative material]

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Community meeting on IRC 2nd February 2023
#2

I find the wording a bit… bizarre for getting a message through.
But for the sake of the argument, wasn’t Intex Aquafish an Indian made phone which was also Jolla-C? How did that go?

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#3

This sounds like a David and Goliath story :slight_smile: I think getting the Indian developer community on board would be great :slight_smile: But I don’t think it has anything to do with laziness. Goliath is big. And what about China?!

#4

Last I checked, Jolla were in the business of licensing their OS to business partners (among other things).

They have also said recently that they were looking for business partners to make up the loss of OMP/Rostelekom.

Have the Indian government, or any companies affiliated with those Interdependent OS developers contacted them?

Maybe it’s the people of India who need to nudge their government towards something like that?

#5

While there is probably some NSA&Co stuff hidden in Android and/or iOS and the associated services, I doubt it would be easy to license SailfishOS to some Indian /Chinese/(Russian…), in short - non Western partner w/o allowing them to implement some surveillance stuff as well, but l’d be happy to be proven wrong:)

#6

Because it takes a lot of money to bribe lobby.

#7

I think it’s the best to ask this question on the community meeting here:

#8

IMO the question was about using Sailfish OS for this government goal. Intex produced hardware with Sailfish preinstalled. AFAIK they produced 10000 pieces. This has nothing to do with Indian government looking forward to have own OS. It just sounds like Russian government some years ago.

#9

Intex made phones with SailfoshOS. But that didn’t make sense. SailfishOs did not support VoLTE back then and without it in India the phone is useless.

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#10

… at least for the cheapest and now also quite common provider JIO by Reliance: They started right away with a 4G (= “Long Term Evolution (LTE)”) network almost 10 years ago and offered only “Voice over LTE (VoLTE)” for telephony.

Hence users of a SIM card by Reliance’s JIO brand had a data-only mobile connection with their Intex Aquafishs.

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#11

@olf @atlochowski yes, as you both mentioned. It was in the past. We’re now, and Sailfish starts to support VoLTE, maybe it’s finally the time to start talking with them?

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#12

without VoLTE and lesser extent VoWiFi, SailfishOS has zero chance in India!

E.g. RJio has nothing but VoLTE network, even the feature phones has to support that technology (main reason why RJio started producing own feature phones back then). Bharti and others have large VoLTE userbase, too…

I guess that was the main factor that killed AquaFish project back then: no VoLTE support made it useless in back-then-starting-RJio - ead back begging comments inf Sailfish forums from that time.

That could make it the preferred device of RJio having no need for smarter feature phones at all.
Especially because “partner ecosystem” support was a main feature of the OS back then.

But that ship has sailed away…

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#13

@zlutor What feature phones do support VoLTE? I want to have one as backup and for simple telephony looking forward to the time when 2G is closed down and SFOS will not provide VoLTE in a reliable way and/or for further use of my existing SFOS phones!

#14

I cannot name any by heart but all that Rjio (branded) is selling for. its network.

there might be some even under Nokia brand…

#15

Not sure it is for you/us. :scream:
“…RJio is also working with Google to develop “ultra-affordable” 5G smartphones for the Indian market…”

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#16

‘## 421 million mobile broadband subscribers on its 4G network.’

So, although that has nothing to do with lobbying the gov’t of India, a user base of that size is indeed an argument for looking at how to break into a market. On the other hand, the competition will be fierce.