After launching a crowdfunding effort in a bit to raise $32 million to build the Ubuntu Edge smartphone, Canonical has not been able to reach its target.
The campaign managed to raise $12 809 906 in 30 days.
Canonical, founded by South African billionaire Mark Shuttleworth, launched the campaign as a fixed funding project, which means it's all or nothing, and it had to achieve its goal in the allocated time in order to be successful.
Canonical said beforehand that should it fail to reach its target, all contributions will be fully refunded. "We appreciate every bit of support we receive during the 30 days, and every backer will be welcomed into the Ubuntu community. If we don't reach our target then we will focus only on commercially available handsets and there will not be an Ubuntu Edge."
Tech analyst Liron Segev says it was no small feat to raise the amount of money that Canonical did, even though the company was unable to reach its target. "It takes a lot to invest in something this new in a time when there are a lot of changes in the market and even established players like BlackBerry are on shaky ground," says Segev. "People are thinking carefully where they want to invest their money."
He notes the target amount set for the crowdfunding campaign might have been a bit ambitious to start with, but says it depended on scale and producing enough volume to bring the unit costs down. "They almost got halfway there, which is respectable. And there is no saying they might not be launching another campaign with a lesser target."
Canonical set a price of $695 for the smartphone until the end of the campaign, of which 5 655 units were claimed. Users could also choose to pay $7 000 for a set of 10 Ubuntu Edge smartphones or fork out $10 000 to receive one of the first 50 Ubuntu Edge smartphones expected to roll off the production line in May 2014, including e-mail access to the designers and engineers that were to build the phone and a VIP invite to join Shuttleworth at the unveiling event.
The self-described "superphone" design showed the 11.4cm screen to be covered by sapphire glass focusing on better dynamic range and colour accuracy. The Edge was designed to have the "fastest available multi-core mobile processor", 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. It features a dual-LTE chip inside for wide-reaching wireless range and dual-boots both the Ubuntu phone OS and Android. One of the key features of the proposed device is the ability to become a desktop PC when it is docked.
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