Jolla Adds Sailfish SDK Installers For Windows, OS X, Linux To Push More Developers To Build Native Apps For Its MeeGo Platform

Jolla, the Finnish startup that carried the MeeGo torch out of Nokia in order to light a fire under its own smartphone OS: Sailfish, has taken the next step in its platform play, launching SDK installers to encourage developers to get building native Sailfish apps.
It’s offering graphical installers for Windows, OS X and Linux (in 32 bit and 64 bit flavours). The SDK itself was released back in February, during the Mobile World Congress tradeshow — where Jolla made a big sales pitch to carriers.

Jolla’s plans for Sailfish include licensing the OS to other device makers and creating customised, branded versions of the software for third parties. But it also intends to create its own Jolla-branded phone hardware running Sailfish. Although Sailfish will support Android, Qt and HTML5 apps, Jolla wants native apps to be part of the mix — to fully take advantage of the Sailfish UI features and properly bring the platform to life as it seeks to build a fully fledged ecosystem.
The Sailfish UI was demoed at the Slush startup event in Finland last November. The software has a big focus is on usability, with pulling and pushing gestures used to navigate and select/view content, allowing a lot to be achieved with one-handed interaction. The platform also supports true multitasking — to allow currently running apps to appear as interactive tiles on the homescreen. These tiles then support app interactions — giving developers scope to customise how users can interact with their apps when they are sitting as tiles on the Sailfish homescreen.
The first Jolla-branded Sailfish handset is due in the second half of this year — likely in time to capture the Christmas market. Jolla CEO Marc Dillon wouldn’t be drawn into predictions of how many native Sailfish apps the OS will have when the first Jolla device launches when TechCrunch spoke to him back in February, saying only that: “We’re getting a lot of interest from developers.”