Upcoming OS player Jolla has set itself the ambitious target of forming the third mobile ecosystem after Android and Apple iOS, ousting Windows Phone from the top three.

“We expect to be the third,” said Marc Dillon, co-founder and COO of the company, which is in the process of rolling out the second generation of the Sailfish OS and the first Jolla Tablet.

Dillon, who was speaking during a media event at Mobile World Congress, said his expectation is that the company will have a “double-digit” percentage market share in a few years, although he was unable to be specific on timing and current market share.

Jolla believes it will be able to achieve its targets with Sailfish 2.0 because the OS offers something different from what Dillon described as the monopolistic tendencies of the two dominant players.

“We are the only independent OS,” said Dillon. “We are not dominated by one company’s strategy.”

Dillon was particularly critical of what he described as the anti-competitive practices of Google, also noting that Android was designed to capture data from users and profit from it.

“We have said that we are not going to sell user data,” said Dillon, who sees the company’s focus on openness, privacy and security, and a high level of integration with regional partners, as among the two key attributes of Sailfish 2.0.

After the launch of Jolla smartphones, the first Jolla Tablet will start shipping in the second quarter of this year at an expected retail price of about US$249. The tablet is based on Intel architecture and was also funded though crowdsourcing. The next step will then be to license Sailfish 2.0 to other vendors to drive the company’s expansion.

Jolla and Sailfish certainly have their work cut out: latest research from IDC indicated that Android and iOS accounted for 96.3 per cent of all smartphone shipments in 2014, with Android’s share at over 80 per cent. Windows Phone accounted for a relatively small share of 2.7 per cent.