Jingling, a tablet-maker founded in June 2020, secured USD 10 million in angel financing from notable investors including Sinovation Ventures and Trustbridge Partners. The company’s founders include Liu Chengcheng, who previously founded leading Chinese tech news outlet 36Kr, and Zhu Rui, who is a veteran of Motorola and Lenovo.
Jingling’s tablets and laptops run on its open-source Linux-based software JingOS and are designed to provide a more streamlined user experience for Windows and Android users. The software has been well-received by the developer community, accumulating over 50,000 downloads on GitHub so far.
“The Linux market is too small for tech giants but too hard for small startups to tackle… aside from Jingling, Huawei is the only other company in China building a mobile operating system, but HarmonyOS focuses more on IoTs,” Liu told TechCrunch.
Jingling’s goal is to make its operating system compatible across different devices with adaptive layouts, noting that Android products lack a unified user experience compared with Apple’s ecosystem. The firm is hoping its JingOS software can reach into fast-growing Linux-based products like Google’s Chromebooks.
With its software team in Beijing and hardware operations in Shenzhen, Jingling’s first product, the ARM-based JingPad A1 tablet, shipped over 500 units in a pre-sale as its crowdfunded campaign gains momentum on Indiegogo. The JingPad A1 is initially priced at USD 549—the mid-range for tablets. The pandemic provoked a spike in demand for tablets, as global shipments grew from 143 million in 2019 to 164 million in 2020, according to research firm IDC.
