Yeah, what a scam, with the huge profit they have on the programme!

Sure, you could say it's just their claim, but the math really checks out.


Let me tell you the story as I remember it. The SailfishOS phone by Intex was announced one year ago with the announcement that once it reaches India, it will be available globally. Mind that it would be the first Intex device to go global, so all the warranty/service support by Intex would have to be created (and then train all their foreign partners with a completely different OS).

Shortly before that, Jolla quit the hardware business, so the availability of the device was an outcome of the agreement with Intex.

Later in 2015, Jolla almost went bankrupt, survived it, but since the original Intex phone was scheduled for the end of the year, many people expected the deal to be off, as Jolla was definitely not a stable partner at that time.

A pleasant surprise came this February before MWC in Barcelona, where at a Mer Meeting it was announced that the deal is still on, but it will be unfortunately limited to India only.
This was received with a disappointment in the community and many people called for Jolla to at least make a developer programme and ship few Intex devices to Europe. This seemed quite impossible - as mentioned above, there's no Intex warranty network outside of India, so servicing the devices would be unimaginably costly. Also the Intex phone is supposed to have advertising in the system, which would not be very welcome by Jolla's community.

Some Indian members of the community promised to try and send the devices from India (=no warranty), but people still begged Jolla to do this and ship it officially.


Now Jolla stepped up and heard those voices, but as Intex certainly plans to go global at some point (they had the plan one year ago and now appeared at MWC), it would hurt their brand if there were Intex phones sent outside of their market without any support. People could connect the "lack of support" and "Intex" and refuse to buy their phones once they officially expand their operation. That's certainly why Jolla went all the way to put their branding on it and offered it to the developer community. Without any profit, to keep the support for them alive. Remember that soon all original Jollas will be out of warranty and developers will not have anything to develop on (there are not many stable ports). Even if Fairphone and Turing phones get their official SailfishOS versions, they will still be in a drastically different price range.


Please consider the context before using the "scam" word. IMHO this operation is as far from scam as possible. Even if they made the profit, which they won't (let alone with only 1000 devices) they transparently published all terms, so there is no misinformation.