14 DAY TRIAL // Ubuntu Edge was the superphone from Canonical that never raised the money it needed to become a reality, and the community is still asking about it, two years later. The truth of the matter is that not making the Ubuntu Edge phone is probably the biggest mistake the company ever made.
Canonical is not the perfect company, and it's made a lot of mistakes over the years. They have been around for more than a decade, and most people know that they've made some wrong turns along the way. Still, Canonical pushed through and changed the opinion of the community about their business practices. You only have to mention Unity and the Amazon live search debacle just to cover two of the worst faux-pas.
They made a sudden switch from GNOME 2.x to Unity, and it took years for the community to embrace it (there are still quite a few opponents to Unity) and they had some PR problem regarding the online search inquiries made through their desktop environment. It's all water under the bridge. They could have made better choices, but the worst choice must have been not to go ahead with Ubuntu Edge.
What's this Ubuntu Edge?
Canonical started a crowdfunding campaign for a super phone on Indiegogo, and they asked for the record sum $32 million (€29 million). They didn't manage to get even half that, but it was still a record. The company only had one month to make it happen, and they dropped the idea completely when it didn't happen. It was about an amazing phone, with over the top hardware specifications, and they just forgot about it.
The campaign started right after Ubuntu Touch was announced, so there was a lot of interest. In fact, Ubuntu Edge is still mentioned each time Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Canonical, takes part in a Q&A. It would have been a tremendous achievement for Canonical and for Mark, even if they needed to make some adjustments. They should have continued the campaign somewhere else, they should have made it flexible so they can use the money already pledged by people. All in all, they should have made a bigger effort.
Canonical underestimated the impact of Ubuntu Edge
Ubuntu Edge acted as a catalyst, and everyone was psyched about it, users from all platforms. It had so much promise, but it would have made a much bigger difference in another part of the business, the development of Ubuntu Edge.
Because Ubuntu Edge didn't happen, the development of Ubuntu Touch was much slower. The estimated launch date for Ubuntu Edge would have been May, 2014. This means that they would have had to work much harder on their OS, and we would have had Ubuntu Touch on other systems much quicker.
The company's mistake was to not see the value of their ideas and design before they become public or even immediately after. Had they gone forward with Ubuntu Edge, despite the fact that it hadn't raised enough money on Indiegogo, Canonical would have been a very different company today.
