Sailfish 4 (Koli) came out in February and I’ve been sitting on this post for six weeks because I kept waiting for the business story to get more interesting than the OS story. It did, in August, when Jolla announced AppSupport for Linux Platforms. That’s the one worth writing about.
On the OS itself: proper dark mode, updated Android layer, reworked permissions, VoLTE on more carriers, better battery life on the Xperia 10 II I’ve been running it on. It’s the best Sailfish has ever been as a daily driver. None of that is the interesting part.
AppSupport for Linux Platforms is Jolla unbundling their Android runtime from Sailfish OS and selling it separately. Any OEM running mainline Linux can now license just the Android app compatibility layer without taking Sailfish as part of the deal. Automotive infotainment, industrial handhelds, anything on Yocto, custom embedded hardware that needs to run Android apps without being Android. That’s a much larger addressable market than “people who want to flash a Finnish OS onto a Sony phone.”
Whether Jolla can actually sell into those channels is the real question. Industrial OEM procurement runs on eighteen-month sales cycles, certifications, pilot programs, and procurement departments that have never heard of Jolla. It’s completely different from consumer software licensing. I want to see a named customer before I take the industrial pivot seriously, but the product direction is the right one regardless.
The underlying financial situation: Aurora OS, the Russian state Sailfish fork that’s been running through Open Mobile Platform since 2018 and rebranded in 2019 after Rostelecom acquired OMP, is still the largest revenue line Jolla has. The European government conversations are getting more visible this year — Schrems II has procurement departments in Germany and Switzerland actively looking for non-US platform alternatives, and Jolla is in those conversations — but nothing has closed into signed contracts I can point to. Aurora is still paying the bills while the European pipeline matures, and those two things are increasingly in tension with each other as a pitch. Not a scandal, just a contradiction that gets more awkward the more Jolla leans into the sovereignty argument.
Sailfish 4 is worth updating to if you’re on Sailfish. AppSupport for Linux Platforms is worth watching if you care about what Jolla is actually building toward. The rest of the corporate picture is the same uncomfortable balance it’s been since 2017.
Update June 2026: The uncomfortable balance ended abruptly in February 2022. Jolla spent two years separating from Russian operations and came out the other side as Jollyboys with no Aurora revenue and a cleaner sovereignty pitch. AppSupport for Linux Platforms apparently found industrial customers, since the company is still running. And in 2026, Commodore chose Sailfish for the Callback flip phone. The European procurement story turned out to be real.