If you were one of the people who backed the Jolla Tablet back in late 2014 with funds, via Indiegogo, thinking you would be getting one, you might be disappointed. The upstart Finnish manufacturer has now revealed that an unnamed number of those original backers won’t be getting the tablet after all.
The Jolla Tablet uses the company’s own Sailfish OS 2.0, which can run both Android apps as well as ones made specifically for Sailfish. The Indiegogo campaign to help fund the 7.85-inch tablet started in November 2014, bringing in more than $2.5 million from 21,637 backers. Jolla started taking conventional pre-orders for the device in “limited quantities” in August of 2015.
Since then, Jolla has struggled with some financial problems and their lead investor pulled their funding. It caused the company to “temporarily lay-off most of our people and apply for debt restructuring” in the Finnish equivalent of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In mid-December, Jolla revealed that it had received some new financial backing that allowed its operations to continue.
Jolla says it managed to ship a small number of the Jolla Tablet to its backers around October 2015, and in its New Year’s message it says it will ship an additional batch to backers in early 2016. Then it dropped the other shoe:
The bad news here is that we are not able to complete the production to fulfill all contributions. In other words, all of our backers will not get a Jolla Tablet. However, you can be sure you will not end up empty handed. We might even have some positive surprises in stock for you. But more on that will follow, feel free to speculate!
There’s no word on how those early Indiegogo backers will be compensated. There’s also no word on what will happen for the people who pre-ordered the tablet earlier in 2015.
Source: Jolla