It pains us to see a project closing down, particularly one related to tablets and one as promising as Jolla. The news came today, on the official blog of the Finnish company, that announced the Jolla Tablet project was dead and also detailed refunds.
With a promising start, that involved raising almost $1 million 24 hours in 2014 and another Indiegogo campaign early last year, it seems that Jolla simply couldn’t handle the pressure of things gone wrong. The company does plan to ship an extra small batch of Jolla Tablets to early Indiegogo backers. The rest of the backers will get a refund, including for shipping and accessories.
The company is not shy to detail its struggles, letting us know they experienced severe issues with component delivers and screen quality. This lead to delays and while in August – September 2015 the preorder campaign was started, October brought us the first batch of 121 shipped units. Then the suppliers had problems and had to change factories two times for production, which lead to another delay.
The financing round for Jolla was also delayed, so even more trouble, which lead to the lack of pay for subcontractors. Long story short, the company laid off some people and now it’s disbanding. The core of this piece is this: Jolla wants to refund the total Indiegogo contributions, including shipping and all accessories. This will take place in two steps: half of the refund will happen in Q1 2016 and the other within a year, if the financial status permits.
Emails will be sent out to backers. Honestly, we hope that maybe the company’s portofolio of good ideas may live on…
