ACL for Jolla brings Android apps
This was supposed to be one of the ‘levelers’ people were looking forward to in Nokia’s Meego devices. Whilst there were Qt apps, sadly these were MeeGo Qt apps only that were immediately compatible (no Symbian Qt) so very little in the way of the ‘all important -_-’ app numbers.
ACL solves the App barrier by allowing Android apps to run on that particular OS. It sounds great but will it be great in practice?
Here’s a demo on a MeeGo tablet.
So on top of HTML5 and Qt apps, you’ve got the option for Android Apps. The OpenMobile site also mentions ACL for Windows.
Source .3t.fi
Cheers jiipee and Muerte for the tip
Category: Jolla
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Hey, thanks for reading my post. My name is Jay and I'm a medical student at the University of Manchester. When I can, I blog here at mynokiablog.com and tweet now and again @jaymontano. We also have a twitter and facebook accounts @mynokiablog and Facebook.com/mynokiablog. Check out the tips, guides and rules for commenting >>click<< Contact us at tips(@)mynokiablog.com or email me directly on jay[at]mynokiablog.comSubscribe
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Sites That Link to this Post
- Jollini uređaji će možda pokretati Android aplikacije?! | NokiaMob | August 17, 2012
- ACL for Jolla brings Android apps : My Nokia Blog | Mob Tech Blog | August 17, 2012
the mobile OS game is getting more and more interested…
“interested” – interesting, of course…
Looking forward to see where Jolly will sail…
is jolla made any thought of india, i dont know
Jay do you have any clue ?
I don’t know if Google can or cannot control this issue, but the key sentence of the article seems to me to be:
“The commercial viability of the idea may be determined by whether Google will allow Jolla’s Meego-devices to its application store”
Can Jolla open its own platform for Android app developers to also publish/offer their apps through there, or is an app developer bound to only offer it at the Android app store?
Jolla will have it’s own Store like Amazon. Jolla is not a part of Google’s ecosystem and it’s good that way. Android developers have to submit their apps on Jolla Store and that’s it.
Ok, thanks. If that’s the case, this could work (assuming the ACL does not pose any performance or other issues)! I had always hoped Jolla could somehow tap the Android apps – seemed like the only viable way to get the apps part of the ecosystem kickstarted. Now they just need to make the app submission system and market place work smoothly for the Android developers to pay attention/bother!
Still, the issue remains if developers are willing to deploy their apps to Jolla’s store as well. It might just all be beneficial to do so, yet it would also incur some costs as to maintaining feedback etc. from the Jolla side of things.
Or devs just simply don’t want to deploy to a Jolla owned store for whatever reason they see fit. It is a worst case scenario of course, time will tell what will happen. One thing is for sure though, Jolla can only keep going for so long without actual HW available or announced. They need to get the name out there in orde to stay ‘top of mind’ (for the non-Nokia followers that is)
Well, Google doesn’t have the only store for android apps out there. If jolla keeps the platform open including the ability to install stand alone apps, then people can just install the shopping apps for other android stores and purchase apps from them.
Why is this vaporware getting so much attention here on mynokiablog? just avoid jolla all together, or start myjollablog if required so that some nokia hating trolls will shift there.
Sorry, but I would rather avoid comments like this. This is not your blog, it is not our blog, this is Jay’s blog and he publishes whatever he wants to. Maybe you should avoid the whole site then, if it is so problematic? Jay has replied to these kinds of questions multiple times, so please give him a break.
you aren’t forced to click on the link of any jolla related news, if you only want WP, then go to wpcentral or wmpoweruser, they suddenly became nokia fanboys after a specific announcement!
people here are interested in Jolla, and it brings clicks, so STFU.
“My Nokia Blog
Random, informal Nokia blog for Nokia, Symbian, Maemo, MeeGo and Windows Phone news, reviews, rants, suggestions and applications.”
one word…
“MeeGo”
It’s not just that though.
Jolla is mostly ex-Nokians, using Nokia technology that many people are still using in current Nokia phones (Qt, MeeGo, Maemo etc).
While Jolla won’t be writing software for Nokia’s phones directly, many developers for Jolla will be using the same toolchain as is being used by the N900, N9 and Symbian phones. There will be lots of cross over with Nokia developers looking to capitalise on the ‘goldrush’ period to stake a claim in the app ecosystem on Jolla’s phones.
What Jolla does could have an immense effect on the future viability of existing Nokia N9 and Symbian handsets as it could support a Qt development ecosystem long after Nokia have abandoned it.
i still cant shake the feeling it will compete with nokia’s products. but then again the initial fans would be open source fans and the anti wp/elop/nokia fans. so maybe not.
Of course it will compete with Nokia’s products.
But equally it may also help Nokia sustaining interest in their Symbian and N9 products, boosting Nokia store software sales.
It will compete with their Windows products also but there’s no upside as Nokia don’t run the marketplace and Qt does not support WP at all.
I think jolla users do care much about ecosystem.
just giving us high end n9 successor with jolla support will do.
The “problem” is that Jolla has said they are aiming for the mainstream consumer market. For those consumers, the comprehensiveness and depth of the ecosystem is much more important, it seems.
But, hopefully Jolla can get it going and can do well enough with the more “tech leader and enthusiast” type consumer base until they do.
I think that’s not true, first and foremost you need really good phone that stands out, that average consumer can instantly pick up and like on its own. If you have one then people and developers will come and the ecosystem will naturally grown around it.
The opposite approach, where you take bunch of things, call them ecosystem and then hope people will buy whatever crappy phone you sell them just to access your ecosystem, that evidently doesn’t work. Not even when you spent billions on creating and marketing the ecosystem.
I agree that a great, appropriately priced phone is a necessary condition. But its not necessarily a sufficient condition.
A bit of an odd stance there. ‘If people buy phones developers will come and the ecosystem will grow’
I believe we are at a point where the ecosystem has become a deciding factor for many. Is app X or app Y not available for my phone? Then it is a NO-BUY. People are influencing eachother and with the plethora of Androids and iPhones out there it is likely that people influence others with apps they onw. Someone else sees it and wants that app as well and naturally will buy a phone with the same OS as the one showing them the app.
Don’t underestimate the mainstream effect of the iPhone and Android devices like the SGS2 and 3. Those devices have made a name for themselves and have become somewhat synonamous with ‘what a good phone is’
Jolla has a big battle ahead, they might come out the other end succesfull, yet it is far from guaranteed in todays market.
I agree with you, that will set a barrier of entry. What I havent yet noticed anywhere is a prioritized list of apps that are a) globally b) in main markets necessary. I would claim it is less than 100 apps that are needed to cover big enough audience.
Im interested to hear, how much different kind of apps were in the works for Meego before feb 2011. There could be some major ones included on the list that Jolla & co could offer to finish.
Has anyone followed the BB developer crowd? Has there been any momentum lately? There could be more Qt apps that could be used more or less directly. Depending on the UI paradigm, there could be need to recreate the UI (some problem with Android).
I dont know the amount of apps Windows mobile, bada or S40 have, but as semi-smartphone platforms they sell pretty well. Ofcourse a consumer paying 400-600EUR for a device expects more.
You are right that there are clearly “must have” apps, and MS and Nokia have gone aggressively after them and many of them have become or are becoming available for WP. Some are still not there of course, such as Instagram which for some odd reason seems to be the best thing since sliced bread for some..
However, having just those (whether its 100 or 1000) in the store just looks bad, even if 95% of the downloads would go to the top 100/1000.
A bit like wine store: basically the same stuff with slightly different taste and label on the bottle but no one wants to go to a store with a selection of just 2. 
Another problem for WP has of course been the lack of graphics heavy games.
As for BB, all I know is that I think I saw some developer interest survey where it was tanking rapidly (with Symbian and Tizen/Meego barely registering anymore, IRRC).
As for how many Meego apps were in development before Feb 2011… purely a guess, but I honestly suspect not that many (sure, perhaps a few hundred or even a thousand), given how bare, AFAIK, the N9 store was left. But yeah, Jolla seems to be planning to try revive some of those – hope they succeed.
I deliberately left WP store out of this discussion
Apple and Google sets the par and the latter is the one that might be emulated. Independent of the fact whether Nokia/MS have or have not paid for a number of apps, it is certain that Jolla wont have the money.
In their shoes Id try to contact as many as possible quality Android app developer companies and offer them full support to include them in Jolla store. Assuming that they try to reach 1Q2013 availability, they have plenty of time to have significant amount of non-rubbish Android apps in their store. In this scenarion ACL has to work well.
With my experiences of Nokia and WP stores, already fewthose amounts makes finding apps boring. Id rather check through external lists for recommendations. Thats is something my Android using freinds are saying they do. Those sources never list hundreds of apps. With cherry picking few thousands would be enough from Android, with in-built core apps (or better integrated functionalities) and Qt/HTML5 based stuff.
Since Im not a dev, Id like to hear about the porting of games to Mer/Jolla. What Ive understood is that atporting least mobile optimized games are pain in the ass to do for WP, but should be quite straightforward for Meego/Mer/Jolla. More resource hungry games do not use the virtual machine at all on Android?
Porting to MeeGo from n9 is in theory trivial probably only adjusting the ui for a new screen size. Also c++/open gl games are trivial to port as it’s basally the same thing in iOS Android and MeeGo .
thanks!
I agree that in future there probably will be a point where you will need wide range of apps to succeed. But not now. There are still billions of people who never had smartphone before and aren’t sure what they should want from it. You can tap into this pool.
bringing android apps is good for the average joes, currently from people I know they care more about specific apps rather than the ecosystem
This should be interesting as well. Posted this to tips but maybe it got lost:
http://www.zdnet.com/jollas-meego-ui-is-ready-to-go-and-its-on-the-hunt-for-mobile-talent-7000002728/
The user interface (UI) for its Jolla device is ready to roll, according to Hurmola: “Our UI is ready now, we haven’t released it yet, we will save it for the product launch and the platform is getting up now so the project looks pretty nice.”
So they can’t use Harmattan ? If I was Nokia I would license it out, but then again..its better than anything else out there, including their current choice, so there is now way they will let a competitor use it on their phones.
As you might know, Harmattan isn’t real Meego. It is still mostly Maemo that was intended as a temporary version before the actual Nokia Meego phones coming out later (that never happened). Jolla’s OS is that proper Meego, based on the open source Mer project that spawned after Nokia went with WP. Starting on a hobbyist friendlier and cleaner base is a wiser choice, in my opinion.
If you were implying that Nokia should license the Swipe UI they made for Harmattan, that would possibly make a bit more sense. On the other hand, Jolla has very little to do with Nokia (even that partnership project was almost nonexistant) and keeping it that way is not a bad thing. There is no reason why they can’t copy some elements and do the rest as they please. For instance, I know that they have swipe-like multitasking (although with different transitions).
You know? So you have seen the UI? General impressions?
Unfortunately I didn’t see it in action. I spoke to a Jolla dev in passing.
ok. so what else did he tell you?
I thought that would happen. maybe we’ll see an intel chip used too :p
same words.. alien dalvik,acl,next?
Nice to see that ACL for MeeGo is perfectly usable. It seems to me that the apps run the same as in the stock android.
Jolla oh Jolla
you making things more interesting here.
Good good.
Oh really? So what the hell are you still doing on myNOKIAblog if this jolly vaporware is what interests you? As far as I know jolly is a Nokia competitor!
is there any nokia left apart from asha?
I didnt see you writin similar posts in MS Surface tablet blog posting.
You could go there to add your opinion: http://mynokiablog.com/2012/08/14/rumor-surface-rt-to-be-priced-at-199/
As long as the bloggers here write about Jolla, I would assume, we have the right to read, comment and enjoy?
+1
WP supports are so afraid of good competition…LOL
Well, I wish them all the best @Jolla, but so far it is nothing more but promises and some phrases about how ready they are and how great it _will_ be. If it really is that great, why not STFU untill you can actually show something, this just sounds like a mediocre attempt to keep some kind of buzz going.
One should be really carefull with that, it is easy to burn and scare away potential fans with these kind of tactics. However, again I wish them all the best, it’s nice to see a new player trying their hand at the mobile game.
Just give them at least the same time as you gave for the amazing Nokia Lumia’s. To match that timeline from announcing the awesome products to launch, they have more than 6 months left.
From Jolla’s CEO…
“We @JollaMobile had some buzz around Android apps in the Finnish media. We have not actually revealed our full apps story yet.”
http://twitter.com/JussiHurmola/status/236478517888548865
and
“Qt is in the heart of #MeeGo and @JollaMobile. Stay tuned for further big Jolla news which for sure you can hear through @JussiHurmola”
http://twitter.com/JussiHurmola/status/236479304073113600
The OpenMobile guys seem very good at attaching their technology to whatever news story they can or maybe it’s Android fanboys in the tech press who can’t see that Android is flawed. At this point OpenMobile and Jolla have not announced ACL for Jolla. OpenMobile had it running on some old MeeGo tablets.
I really hope Jolla are NOT relying on using ACL for their app ecosystem. That would be depressing and would be a kick in the nuts to anyone who appreciates the architecture used in Maemo/MeeGo and why it’s so much better than Android. Jussi’s last two tweets seem to suggest they’ve NOT relying on ACL.
Android apps are fine on Android. Jolla need something BETTER than wedging in Android apps via a compatibility layer. If they have the ability to run Android apps then nobody will develop native Jolla apps.
Jolla, Digia and others need to make sure Qt is the primary development platform on Jolla’s phones AND that the Android port of Qt is a first class development environment for Android development so that Android developers develop using Qt and can quickly port to MeeGo/Jolla.
Somebody already ported QT to Android last year.
http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2011/02/28/necessitas/
Officially Digia has said they would port it to Android and IOS.
I know, but that port was from a third party and was never given the same promotion as Qt on Nokia’s own OS.
Digia seem to understand Qt has to regain its cross platform cred. This could be the best thing to ever happen to Qt.
WHERE TO BUY JOLLA STOCKS???
I have seen this video ages ago…about one year ago…any reason to publish it now Jay ?
because Jay is jumping to JOLLA
His point is that OpenMobile are vaporware peddlers.
Look at their entire history over the last few years.
Besides, latest info suggests Jolla’s more likely to leverage BBX & iOS.
(alongside wider QT ecosystem & HTML5 of course)
So, they will have Android applications. Why would they get any reasonable amount of native applications when the developers can reach the Jolla platform with Androids applications?
That makes Jolla just another Android variant.
I don’t see google having a real problem with Jolla MeeGo devices purchasing apps on Google Play. Google would still be making the money and so would the devs.
Qt also make development a bit more streamlined for less experienced devs, though having C++ experience would make for a better dev.
The conditions for using Google Play (or in fact any of the Google apps) is of course completely and ONLY using Google apps, so only google for maps, only google for ads, only google for search, etc. This is why Nokia did not choose Android, it’s not an open platform at all since they would either be forced to use google maps, or have an android which can not use any google services at all (this is what the kindle fire does for example, and while that’s very nice, it’s as much android as a tomtom gps device is a linux desktop).
So, they probably need to convince developers to publish to the jolla store instead.
And we all remember the OS/2 warp story right?
OpenMobile have a history of being pure FUD/vaporware, they’re trolls.
Then there’s this statement from Jussi over the recent spate of stories surrounding OpenACL:
https://twitter.com/JussiHurmola/status/236478517888548865
Plus latest rumours suggest that rather than Android, Jolla will be trying to leverage BBX & iOS apps.*
(in addition to the wider Qt ecosystem & HTML5 ofc…)
*CBF’d going into detail as-to-how they plan to do this.