A group of former Nokia employees has formed a new company called Jolla to develop smartphones running the MeeGo operating system. Jolla CEO Jussi Hurmola told the Wall Street Journal that the start-up needed to raise about EUR 10 million from private investors to develop the smartphone. He said Jolla would need to sell 50,000 to 100,000 of the phone to break even. The Helsinki-based company is in talks with partners such as manufacturers and chip-set suppliers in an effort to get a phone on the market by year-end. Hurmola said Jolla has signed deals with several partners since starting work late last year. MeeGo is Nokia's abandoned attempt at establishing an open-source operating system for smartphones. It was unveiled in early 2010 with Intel and released in one phone, the Nokia N9.
