Linux organization Canonical sadly failed in its bid to raise $32m to fund development of its Ubuntu Edge smartphone, even though its eventual $12.8m in pledges was the biggest sum ever amassed through crowdfunding. However, the massive publicity engendered by the unconventional financing drive has thrown a bright spotlight on the program to develop a mobile and multi-device Linux platform to drive new kinds of web applications, devices and behaviors ‘ which was perhaps the real goal all along.
The plan to develop its own handset is now on hold, though it may be revived by other means, as Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth remains convinced that the Edge would have shaken up the tired norms of the current handset and tablet space. He told ZDnet: “We thought we could take a leap forward two or three years in terms of the capabilities of today’s phone through the Edge’, moving away from the nearly-identical ‘slabs of glass’ that dominate the sector now and giving a handset the kind of memory and storage usually seen on PCs (128Gbytes of solid state drive and at least 4Gbytes of RAM).
This fits Canonical’s bid to push ahead of Android, iOS and the emerging wave of web-based OSs like Firefox Mobile, by creating a platform that genuinely functioned across PCs (or their successors) and phones. Rather than try to make a single user interface work across different sized screens, with the compromises that entails for developers and users, the vision is of an adaptive interface. This would make the Edge behave like a smartphone, with an optimized UI, when in the user’s hand, while it would drive a desktop interface when docked with a monitor.
This is not a new concept ‘ connecting a mobile device to a larger screen to offer PC capabilities and experiences, without an actual PC, has been discussed for almost a decade by chip and device makers. However, Canonical’s multi-device OS, and particularly the adaptive Edge gadget, are starting to demonstrate a workable reality. Shuttleworth said ‘Folks feel there’s a hunger for something new and it sent a signal as to what that something new might look like.’ While acknowledging the PC/phone idea had not proved sufficient to raise the $32m needed, he added: ‘If we had been a mainstream manufacturer and seen that amount of support, the device would be happening for sure.”
In future, the organization might look for an industry partner to share some of the upfront costs as well as their manufacturing and distribution experience. For now, the priority will be to get those handset makers to support the Ubuntu OS on high profile devices and to get at least two midrange, and two high end, examples launched in 2014. Three large handset manufacturers have installed the Ubuntu Touch OS on prototype handsets and the platform has been presented to a dozen carriers, says Canonical.
While Firefox is concentrating on delivering a full smartphone experience to lower cost devices, with a heavy focus on web apps and streaming, Ubuntu is initially more interested in tapping into its existing enterprise base, and appealing to the ‘25% of users’ who want to use their smartphone mainly for calls, messaging and web browsing, not for apps. Like Baidu (see separate item), it hopes that angle will help it ride the wave as users move away from downloads and closed stores, towards HTML5 and web software. Shuttleworth expressed it: “These are slightly more conservative phone users who to carry a smartphone, but they want something a little bit more coherent and elegant than Android.” They will also be interested in the good security inherent in enterprise class Linux, which he feels Google dumped in Android ‘in order to be an embedded platform’.
Version 1.0 of the Ubuntu Touch OS, which will be “very basic”, will ship in October, followed by a second major release in April 2014. Ubuntu Touch will eventually merge with the code base for desktop and server Ubuntu.
Canonical CEO Jane Silber said this week: “I think the full Ubuntu convergence experience will not be in the first round of Ubuntu phones, which we’re targeting for the first quarter 2014. Just phones, not a full converged plug-into-your-monitor device. I think convergence is the future. It may take many forms.”
Meanwhile, another would-be driver of new web-oriented mobile experiences, Jolla, says it has sold out of the first production batch of smartphones running its new Sailfish Linux OS, which is based on the former Nokia/Intel platform, MeeGo. Jolla launched its first smartphone in May and kicked off an online pre-order campaign, which reached its first batch limit by mid-July. Online pre-orders were received from 136 countries in total but the start-up would not disclose actual sales numbers. CEO Tomi Pienim’ki said: “For those who missed the first opportunity, we are now doing our best to offer a second chance, a new batch of Jolla smartphones later in the autumn.”