Following the launch of its first smartphone yesterday (27 November), Finnish vendor Jolla played up future demand, with Antti Saarnio (pictured), chairman and co-founder, forecasting to Bloomberg sales of millions of devices.

“This is a product where our company can introduce our idealistic views on how we believe the mobile phone should be,” said Saarnio.

“On the business side, we’re dead serious. With our own phone and our partners’ phones combined, we’re expecting to sell millions of phones.”

The company has taken its first small steps in the pursuit of such lofty goals with yesterday’s launch, which saw the delivery of an initial 450 devices to customers in Helsinki.

In addition, customers’ preorders accounted for its first production run of tens of thousands of Jolla handsets.

And the company hopes to scale that figure with its ambitious rollout plans. It has received preorders from 136 countries and wants to start selling its smartphone in the rest of Europe and China next year.