Jolla Ltd. is an independent Finland based smartphone product company which continues work that Nokia started with MeeGo OS. Jolla plans to design, develop and sell new MeeGo based smartphones. Together with international private investors and partners, a new smartphone using this MeeGo based OS is expected to be revealed later this year.

The Jolla team is formed by directors and core professionals from Nokia's MeeGo N9 organisation, together with some people working on MeeGo in the communities.

Jussi Hurmola, CEO Jolla Ltd.: "Nokia created something wonderful - the world's best smartphone product. It deserves to be continued, and we will do that together with all the bright and gifted people contributing to the MeeGo success story."

Jolla Ltd. has been developing a new smartphone product and the OS since the end of 2011. The OS has evolved from MeeGo OS using Mer Core and Qt with Jolla technology including its own brand new UI.

The Jolla team consists of a substantial number of MeeGo's core engineers and directors, and is hiring the top MeeGo and Linux talent to contribute to the next generation smartphone production.

So far, Linux-based MeeGo has been deployed in just one smartphone model, the Nokia N9.

Nokia last year swapped its MeeGo and Symbian platforms for Microsoft's Windows Phone.

Jolla may struggle to break into the highly competitive smartphone market, which is dominated by Google and Apple.