Ubuntu Does Not Reach Crowdsourcing Target

Canonical recently began crowdsourcing for $32 million (in 30 days) in order to support its new Ubuntu Edge smartphone, but ultimately fell short of its goal, receiving less than $13 million.

The CEO at Canonical, Mark Shuttleworth, had initially said that to be successful, the company would need to “smash every record in crowdfunding history.”

This project broke records as it was the fastest to reach $2 million (achieved in under eight hours), and raised the highest amount ever in 24 hours ($3.45 million).

Two separate price drops brought the final price of the phone down from $830 to $695, but even with the $80,000 pledge of support from Bloomberg, the campaign was not successful.

The amount raised would have been sufficient to manufacture 40,000 devices and prove market demand for the new hardware and software technology. The specifics of the hardware had not been finalized at the start of the campaign, but at least a 4-GB RAM, 128-GB onboard storage and the fastest multicore processor (available at the time of production) was promised to potential investors by Shuttleworth.

According to Shuttleworth, Canonical was “not trying to get into the phone business” but was in fact “working with phone companies for your normal, mid- and high-end phones.”

The Ubuntu Edge and Canonical blog post stated that even though the target was not reached, the company had learned a lot, specifically about the attention and buzz around the Ubuntu operating system. Other smartphones with the same system will enter the market next year.

Shuttleworth noted that the product would have been available as a limited edition to supporters of the campaign, and the company would be issuing refunds to all supporters. (CY) Link