Jolla on Tuesday announced it is spinning off its hardware division into a separate company so it can concentrate on licensing its Sailfish smartphone OS.
The restructuring will see CEO Tomi Pienimäki leave the Finnish device maker in August.
"Every young company has to find its clear focus at some time, and for Jolla that time is now," said Antti Saarnio, chairman of Jolla, who will ta ke charge of the newly-organised Jolla.
"We have huge opportunities in the Sailfish OS licensing business, and I am very proud and excited to take responsibility of steering the Jolla ship to a new commercial phase," he said. "After three years of intensive Sailfish OS research and development we are now moving full speed to new bigger waters, which requires full focus on software from the team."
The new hardware company will focus on developing secure devices for privacy-conscious consumers and corporations. A new leader of the hardware company will be appointed in the autumn.
Jolla also reiterated its commitment to launching its first Sailfish-powered tablet. The company set out to raise US$380,000 to fund an initial production run of 2,000 tablets. It comfortably exceeded that target, raising $2.6 million in total.
Jolla planned to begin shipping the crowd-funded device in the second quarter; however, that has yet to happen.
"The software (Sailfish OS) part of the work is in good shape but we have been slowed down by supply issues of certain hardware components," said Saarnio. "We expect to solve this issue very soon."
