Canonical announces first partners to ship Ubuntu phones around the globe

Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the company behind the Linux distribution believes that Ubuntu for phones will first find a niche in countries where Ubuntu is well known

Linux is barely well known to the general population. Let alone getting them to differentiate the Ubuntu brand.

Ubuntu strives to be “the smartphone that’s also a full PC”.[26] Canonical reports that software for the mobile version of Ubuntu is also compatible with versions for PCs and televisions. This is a feature not currently offered by other operating system companies, and aims to simplify both the use and development of the product

Pundits tell me nobody wants that, see Windows PCs, tablets, phones are servers. Right?

The aforementioned PC and mobile synergy may also be attractive to corporate IT departments currently using Ubuntu to run their servers

Totally different environments that share only the fact they are powered by electricity.

Mobile devices can be connected to larger displays and other peripherals such as wireless keyboards. Windows applications can also be accessed from corporate servers onto a mobile device, which makes the transferring of data more efficient

While I think we'll get there, we are far away from our smartphones having the power to run a full PC OS with our current workloads. Perhaps Ubuntu is looking too much into the future... personally I think they need the revenue of today's reality.

I won't even comment the phrase about Windows applications as it makes no sense.

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If the Wikipedia article accurately reflects what Canonical thinks are the selling points for their Ubuntu phones, then I believe this is going to be a sad disappointment.

Another point is that Microsoft, with all its power, can barely break the iOS/Android dominance in mind share... how Canonical plans to do that with such weak selling points?

Openness is rarely a worry for smartphone users and developers alike (only a minority of them care and the impact on revenue is probably irrelevant). So is it price alone? Cheaper than Android? If so, we are back to the ecosystem that is nonexistent yet.

I'd love a really open alternative, and things have to start somewhere, but Canonical doesn't seem positioned well enough to take on the competitors.

Pity that I moved to Optimus a few years ago.

I think that story changes somewhat on a country-by-country basis. India, for example, has a relatively high Ubuntu adoption rate. Of course, the numbers aren't huge anywhere, and I agree that relying on the Ubuntu brand name alone isn't going to move products.

> Totally different environments that share only the fact they are powered by electricity.

At least in tech companies, specifically web development, that isn't an irrelevant thing. If your personal dev machine is running the same environment as the server where your app is running, that greatly simplifies package dependencies and deployment. If your personal dev machine is also your company-issued phone, that's very convenient.

> While I think we'll get there, we are far away from our smartphones having the power to run a full PC OS with our current workloads. Perhaps Ubuntu is looking too much into the future... personally I think they need the revenue of today's reality.

I think we're already there. With smartphone tech running rich 3D applications and powering 4K displays, I don't think any more horsepower is required for your average word processing/email/web scenario. And if we're not there yet, we certainly will be in under 5 years, and planning for a future that will soon exist is exactly how tech companies get the jump on competition (See: iPhone).

> I won't even comment the phrase about Windows applications as it makes no sense.

It makes perfect sense. Many companies now deliver the standard MS Office suite to employees via cloud solutions like Citrix (http://www.citrix.com/). And with MS and Office heading even further in that direction with native cloud implementations, having a Windows OS is becoming increasingly unnecessary. Having a DESKTOP OS is mandatory, but it doesn't need to be Windows anymore.

If these Ubuntu phones are powerful enough to run a browser smoothly in the desktop configuration, they'll be incredibly useful.

Another potential boon for Ubuntu phones is Steam on Linux. As history shows, the platform with the most games is usually the most successful. As Steamboxes begin to roll out and the platform gains more developer support, owners of Ubuntu phones will find that the device they're already carrying around is also a microconsole.