lundi 12 août 2013

Ubuntu Edge: even if it does not reach $ 32 million, Canonical has earned

Note: this article was originally published on ZDNet.com, where you can find it in the original version.

Canonical, the company which publishes the distribution GNU / Linux Ubuntu, makes a bet. It has relied on the fact that there were enough visionaries to raise 32 million dollars in crowdfunding and manufacture the first device combining smartphone and PC based on Linux, Ubuntu Edge. It seems that the company will miss his bet, but in the long term, I think that Canonical will leave the winner game table.


Canonical will be winning, even if it is unable to raise the funds for the Ubuntu Edge. -Image Canonical

First, even with the investment of $ 80,000 by Bloomberg in the (English) project, indicators show that Ubuntu Edge crowdfunding campaign will miss its goal. Even when it decided to lower the price of the device at 695 dollars on August 8, Canonical has been unable to raise donations. This 12 August, ten days away from the date of the fundraiser on Indiegogo campaign, the company only received pledges $ 9.6 million.

Huge pledges

From what I know, it is the largest fund raising carried out by a commercial enterprise in a limited time. But it is still not enough.

Some hope that Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical and Ubuntu, will save the project by investing at the last minute. This seems unlikely. Questioned by the British newspaper The Guardian, he clearly said that "if we do not reach our goal, there not Ubuntu Edge".

Shuttleworth did not lose sleep. It has already announced at CNET that "multiply by three the record of crowdfunding is a super-ambitieux project". But "it is also clear that this project is auxiliary in the mission, which is to bring Ubuntu on the market".

Exactly.

Ubuntu is perhaps the biggest fish in the distributions of GNU / Linux on the desktop, but on smartphone and in the technological world in general, it is small fry. Project Ubuntu Edge has already managed to attract the attention of companies like Bloomberg, who would have otherwise than barely noticed Canonical.

For Mark Shuttleworth, the question is not that of a Ubuntu phone. "It comes to change the dynamics of innovation," according to him, and it is both a truth and a key point.

Thinker of the computer of the future

Canonical is far from being the first company to speak of a hybrid device all-in-one. From what I know, this is the first to bring both an operating system, Ubuntu, and an interface, Unity, which can turn on both smartphone and Tablet-PC.

As Jason Perlow, ZDNet, recently noted, "Shuttleworth vision become a reality, you need a unified platform. "In other words, Smartphone, Tablet and the workstation OS must be the same operating system, the same objective, developer and in the end, the same device."

I think that this is exactly the direction taken by the technology. Even if there is never Ubuntu edge, Canonical is positioned as a visionary company in this new form of computing.

Someone, will soon start to manufacture these all-in-one devices. I suspect strongly that Canonical will be involved in these projects, even if it does not run. At this time, when hybridization smartphone / PC invade both consumer electronics and professional computing, Canonical will affect dividends from its early advances.

It WINS, loses or makes shutout with the Edge Ubuntu, Canonical is now positioned to the Linux community, the general public and potential partners as a company that thinks big the future of computing. This is a good place to occupy.

Aucun commentaire:

Enregistrer un commentaire