Jolla, the Finnish start-up launched by a group of Nokia employees, has advanced plans to launch a device based on the MeeGo mobile OS – claiming it has raised EUR200 million from a consortium of mobile industry investors.

The firm says it plans to unveil its first device next month running on a new version of the MeeGo-based platform it is calling ‘Sailfish,’ reports the Wall Street Journal.

"There has been a lot of interest in what we're doing and it has been a busy few months," Jolla CEO Jussi Hurmola told the newspaper.

The investor consortium is said to be made up of a range of industry players—including at least one operator and a chipset maker, as well as device and component manufacturers.

Hurmola said Jolla will distribute its version of MeeGo free of charge to device makers – but says the firm is looking at a range of other ways to raise funds, including via mobile advertising, software licensing and a possible IPO.

The company said the Sailfish system will be ready for licensing by other device manufacturers, design houses and service companies by spring 2013.

Nokia launched the open-source MeeGo OS in partnership with Intel in 2010, but it was largely abandoned last year when Nokia adopted Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform for its smartphones. MeeGo's assets were subsequently transferred to the Linux Foundation.

MeeGo was used in only one commercial Nokia smartphone, the N9, which was well-regarded but suffered from Nokia’s withdrawal of support for the platform.