14 DAY TRIAL // Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Canonical and the force behind the Ubuntu operating system, has revealed some more information about the upcoming release of the Ubuntu Touch hardware in the fall of 2014.
Even if Ubuntu for phones and tables is still under heavy development and Canonical is doing its best to make it compete with the other major platforms out there, there are already a few hardware makers ready to use it on their own devices.
A couple of smaller hardware makers, Meizu and BQ, have already announced their intentions to release the first Ubuntu phones in the fall of 2014, but the community wanted some bigger industry names to back the Ubuntu Touch project and release their own versions. Mark Shuttleworth explained that there are, in fact, some big companies that are ready to invest their time and money to ship Ubuntu devices.
“We are engaged in behind the scene conversations with a full spectrum of manufacturers, including a very significant manufacturer that previously had their own platform. I feel very confident that large manufacturers are looking seriously at Ubuntu as the new open platform of choice, but we wanted to choose the manufacturers who had the DNA of breaking into markets,” said Mark Shuttleworth during an interview with Steve Costello for MWL TV.
The Canonical founder also said that the company initially intended to make only the phone platform, but it has been convinced to tackle the tablet version as well, which obviously slowed its development cycle. The good news is that both Ubuntu for phones and tablets will be out in the fall.
“We brought the tablet schedule forward and pushed the phone schedule back a little back. So middle of this year to Q3 this year we'll see both phones running Ubuntu on the market,” also said Mark Shuttleworth.
Another interesting talking point in the conversation was about the way Canonical expects to make money from Ubuntu for phones and tablets. He explained that it would be receiving a royalty from each device sold, just like Google does with Android.
The difference between the two platforms is that carriers will be able modify the operating system to their liking, but they won't fragment the platform and this won't affect the applications made by the community developers.
Ubuntu for phones and tablets has been under development for more than a year. A stable release is already available and it can be installed on Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 devices, if you want to check it out.