Indian smartphone manufacturer Intex has licensed the Sailfish OS from the Finnish corp Jolla to release Sailfish based smartphones by the end of this year, reports Techcrunch. The first smartphone to launch under this initiative will be called Aqua Fish and will be available in September this year. The phone will be priced at less than Rs 10,000. Interestingly, earlier this month, Jolla announced that it would stop making devices itself, and would instead focus on developing the Sailfish software and on the OS licensing business. As a part of this, the company announced Sailfish India, a ‘regional mobile ecosystem initiative’ with partners including Intex Technologies, Times Internet and Snapdeal. Note that Jolla partnered with Snapdeal in March to promote Sailfish OS in India. As a part of this alliance, Snapdeal would get a ‘privileged license’ to Sailfish OS to build its own mobile offerings using the OS’s features. Basically, Snapdeal would get an OS to put on its self-branded phones, if it indeed planned to do this. Other than this, Jolla mentions that Snapdeal will get to integrate its app in a prominent location in the Sailfish OS interface. Similarly Times Internet’s music service Gaana will also come preloaded on the phone. The company further mentions it has seen a lot of interest from device vendors, mobile operators and digital media houses in India for its operating systems. Looks like Jolla is basically looking for a revenue sharing agreement with device manufacturers, local services and media houses etc., which should…
