Mobile OS security gains strength as a selling proposition

4 December 2016 by Steve Blum
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They mind their own business.

A reason for Sailfish’s existence, and perhaps even for the $12 million investment it received earlier this year is becoming clearer. It’s an alternative mobile operating system – a competitor to Android and iOS – that arose from the ashes of Nokia’s MeeGo operating system, which was scrapped when Microsoft bought the company.

But it didn’t buy everything and the Finnish engineers who stayed behind started a new company, Jolla, and kept working on it. And now they’ve found a big customer in the Russian government. According to a press release from Jolla

Sami Pienimaki, CEO of Jolla Ltd. comments: “Sailfish OS development in Russia is an important part of Jolla’s wider agenda, aiming to power various countries’ mobile ecosystems. Our solution is based on open source code and contribution models with partners, which makes it possible to ramp up local systems effectively in 6 months. We have now done this in Russia with a local partner and using this experience we are looking forward to ramping up similar projects in other countries.”

In Russia, Sailfish OS is the only mobile operating system, which has been officially accepted to be used in governmental and government controlled corporations’ upcoming mobile device projects.

Customers in China and South Africa – two other countries that don’t put complete trust in the developed world’s good intentions – are also reported to be giving Sailfish a close look.

Sailfish’s selling proposition is security, and it makes good on that promise in a couple different ways. First, it’s open source, which means anyone who installs it can inspect the code for bugs and gain a level of confidence that there are no backdoors or otherwise compromised encryption systems, as with the Blackberry OS or as the U.S. government seeks for iOS and Android.

Second, Finland has strong privacy laws. It’s why Turing Robotics, a tiny mobile phone maker that also aims for the security minded side of the market, moved its mobile phone operations there from California.