14 DAY TRIAL // Mark Shuttleworth has confirmed that Canonical has landed its first hardware partner for Ubuntu Touch, but he refused to give away the name.
Ever since Canonical announced that it was working on Ubuntu Touch, the company has been in search of a hardware partner that can carry the Ubuntu Touch OS and give it the push it needs.
It's unlike Canonical to give important information like this on other channels than the official website, but Mark Shuttleworth spilled the beans, at least partially, about a deal they made with an unknown partner.
"We have concluded our first set of agreements to ship Ubuntu on mobile phones. We've shifted gears from 'making a concept' to 'it's going to ship.' That has a big impact on the team," said Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the company, according to cnet.com.
"We are now pretty much at the board level on four household brands. They sell a lot of phones all over the world, in emerging and fully emerged markets, to businesses and consumers," Shuttleworth added.
These statements were made during an interview at LeWeb conference and he probably wanted to give people something to chew on, beside the usual Ubuntu Touch marketing speeches.
Ubuntu Touch was announced almost a year ago, in January, and Canonical has caused quite a stir with its new operating system.
When Canonical released its latest operating system, Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander), it also released Ubuntu Touch 1.0, the first stable version of the mobile OS. It's working and it has a few normal features, but it's far from a finished product.
Whatever Canonical is planning to do in 2014, it will happen after the month of April, when the new Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is scheduled to ship. Reportedly, Ubuntu Touch should hit version 1.5, making it a much better candidate for an official release.