After announcing earlier this month that not all Jolla Tablet backers will actually get their devices, Jolla has revealed its plans for wrapping up the whole Jolla Tablet situation.
Jolla plans to ship the remaining 540 Jolla Tablets to Indiegogo backers starting in February. The backers that don’t get a Jolla Tablet will be refunded, but because of Jolla’s financial constraints, the refunds will be sent in two parts. Half of the refund will come in Q1 2016, with the second half expected to be delivered sometime later this year.
Folks that ordered a Jolla Tablet directly from the Jolla Shop will get a full refund for their order.
Jolla also notes that if you’d like to donate your Jolla Tablet payment to fund the company, you can do so. Indiegogo backers that don’t respond to the refund application will have their payment donated to Jolla. Pre-order customers can submit a request to have their money donated.
What happened to cause all of this messiness, you ask? Jolla explains that it had issues with component deliveries and display quality and that its supplier had issues of their own that caused them to change factories twice. Finally, delays with financing caused Jolla to be unable to pay its subcontractors, which resulted in further delays.
Jolla did ship its first batch of tablets in October, sending 121 tablets to backers. With this upcoming shipment of 540 units, it appears as though Jolla will end up shipping just 661 Jolla Tablets.
The whole Jolla Tablet situation is kind of crazy. We got a first look at the Jolla Tablet in March 2015 and came away impressed by the device, which offered respectable features and a premium body for a starting price of $219. It seems that Jolla had a string of bad luck later in 2015, though, and now the Jolla Tablet is going to be more of a limited edition curiosity instead of a device that really does something for Jolla. The company seems like it plans on sticking around despite this whole situation, though, and it’s received “significant interest” from unspecified mobile companies about licensing Sailfish OS.
