Sadly, Canonical’s plans seemed to falter for a while last year, after its scheme to crowdfund its own Ubuntu Edge handset failed to meet the required level of pledged donations. Undeterred, however, the firm has returned to working with partners to bring the first handsets to market instead.
The initial smartphone partners for Canonical are BQ and Meizu, which are not especially well known in the wider marketplace, but then few people had ever heard of HTC until it started pushing its own-brand devices instead of manufacturing them for others.
And if the Ubuntu phone proves a hit, we can expect other vendors to take an interest, especially if the rumours are true that Google is beginning to turn the screw on Android licensees and force them to install more and more Google-specific apps and services on top of the operating system itself.