Ubuntu: “We’re not Linux”

I'll spell it out for you:

Canonical doesn't have a prayer of competing with 1) Apple, 2) Google/Android, and 3) Windows, all at the same time, and building any significant marketshare on devices that are used solely for consumption. You're not going to be able to watch TV shows on Ubuntu devices, or download apps from major publishers, or do anything else except geeky stuff. The TV/movie studios aren't going to get involved with Canonical so you can, for instance, download and watch the latest "Games of Thrones" on your Ubuntu tablet or phone. The cellular carriers are not going to carry Ubuntu phones. Why would they? They're already carrying devices from 3 major vendors; why would they waste effort on a small #4 from South Africa? Gimme a break. If Canonical wanted to really break into this space, they should have done it 5 years ago. Worse, they don't bring anything new to the table: mobile devices already have perfectly good UIs, and you have 3 to choose from. It's not like Unity is going to be heads and tails better than iOS, Android, or WP7 (in fact, for a touchscreen device, it sounds like it'd be a big PITA, since they don't want to use menus to find apps for some stupid reason. Having to type in "angry" on a tiny touchscreen virtual keyboard every time you want to play Angry Birds is just idiotic).

And the technology that Unity is trying to replace isn't dying, except in the minds of morons. Try typing a novel or a few thousand lines of C code on a touchscreen.

Thanks @jdixon -- I'm in no way predicting success or failure in Canonical's current and future endeavors.

I've always said that key to success in laptop/desktop computing, which my interlocutors say is the only pool Ubuntu should be swimming in, is one thing and one thing only:

Preloads.

Canonical has had years during which to make this happen, to get Ubuntu preloaded by OEMs and sold, even to us geeky folks, as a more complete, saner, cheaper, less-troublesome way to compute than either Windows or Macintosh.

That's where they could be using all this marketing -- showing the world how a Linux desktop solves so many problems for users.

Didn't happen.

Maybe it couldn't happen. Maybe Canonical tried and failed at this and is now looking forward to other opportunities.

Maybe now that the traditional desktop is technology's red-headed stepchild (i.e. half the world thinks it's dead) Canonical (or other) can have a go at OEM desktops and laptops.

But I'm not working at Canonical or any other company in a similar position.

Regarding tablet, mobile and TV devices, success for any new player in this space is far from assured. Failure will strike more ventures than not.

All I know is that I'm glad to see Mozilla's Boot to Gecko potentially bringing some freedom to devices that aren't seeing much of it. Same with Ubuntu. As unattractive as Ubuntu is for me personally on the desktop, given the hundreds of other choices in terms of Linux distributions, Ubuntu looks a whole lot better stacked up against the very few, very proprietary options we have now on mobile and tablet devices.

Any move into mobile is bold. I prefer to give credit now knowing that nobody but us geeks cares about the desktop.

Quoting:Canonical doesn't have a prayer of competing with ...

I say Canonical has very good chance in succeeding if they become their own independent OEM.

True, it does take a good amount of capital investment, but it is the only way it is going to be able to compete against Apple & MS.

Google is not a competitor of Canonical and they are giving Android for free because they have a much bigger primary revenue generators than little computer devices.

MS has all OEMs under control, the minute it loses its grip over them, it will have its own devices too. The way the technology is going for it, I believe they will have their own devices eventually. By then, it is probably going to be too late.

Apple have their own hardware and software and that is a critical reason for its success. It enables it to create products that just work and that is a key attribute that average users look for. The average user needs portability, reliability, and functionality to do the various trivial task they do day in day out. Netbooks, Tablets, Smart Phones and hand held devices in general going to be much more popular than desktop because there are many more novice user than power user in both business and house hold worlds that need no more than sending e-mail, plays multimedia, take pictures, create small documents, and run specialized little applications locally and access more sophisticated apps on the cloud.

If Canonical becomes its own OEM, they only have to compete against Apple. It will be difficult, but it is doable. If they keep improving Unity to run on tablets with all desktop applications available, I think they might have pretty good chance to compete against Apple. That is feasible because the resources on tables these day could be made to match full fledged desktop resources.

I don't know what was the reason Canonical didn't do that with desktops earlier, but with tablets, they aren't too far behind and could catch up with Apple and go beyond by adding desktop apps and functions.

If KDE are giving it a try with Vivaldi relying only on donations, I believe Canonical should have no problem, especially with the resources it has available for it.

You're all forgetting the big thing that made Apple's iDevices such a hit: apps. It's also the big thing that kept Linux from really taking off on the desktop. Apple has its iTunes app store with 10s of thousands of apps, Google/Android has the Google Play store with even more apps, even WP7 has a crappy app store with a few dozen apps (I exaggerate, it's more, but nowhere near as large as the other two). In addition, you can download and play movies, music, and TV shows from these stores. How is Canonical going to match that? Simple: they aren't. Not many people are going to buy Ubuntu tablets that they can't play Angry Birds on, and that they can only download Free software on, and independent software vendors aren't going to bother making non-free apps for them either, for good reason: they already have 3 platforms to deal with. In fact, this is one of the big problems MS is running into: many ISVs don't want to bother with WP7 because they're already busy with iOS and Android, which both have ~98% of the market, so they don't want to waste resources porting their software to a totally different environment for a small number of users. MS was too little, too late, and they're probably going to fail in the phone/tablet market; the ISVs have already gotten situated with the two dominant platforms, just the way that 10+ years ago, the ISVs got situated with Windows and didn't want to waste resources chasing other platforms (they might pursue Mac, but they didn't waste time with OS/2, BeOS, or Linux). Apparently MS totally forgot the lesson about being early to market with a platform ISVs could develop for and use to sell their wares. Canonical, now #4 (actually #5 if you count RIM) to the game, doesn't have a chance of getting ISV attention.

Sure, they could make their own hardware, but it's going to be like the Atari Jaguar or Sega Saturn: a possibly nice piece of hardware, with very little software to run on it. Remember how well those worked out? Both those companies died after those debacles. The KDE tablet looks OK, but they have a shoestring budget and as such, aren't depending on big revenues to make it all work out, so they probably don't care that much if they only get 0.1% of the tablet market; Canonical can't afford to keep paying the bills if all they can manage is to sell tablets to a small number of geeks.

Quoting:The iFanbois would buy cr@p on a silver platter, if it were called iCr@p.

So true, buying Apple products is a fashion statement these days, except, although the IPad III is not the best in its category, it is not Cr@p either. It is well designed, elegant, well thought off, intuitive and functional. It still doesn't have some of the key apps. like libreoffice and such, which my wife as many others, use quite a bit.

Quoting:What prevents Microsoft from developing similar apps?

Like you said nothing. As a matter of fact, MS already is trying to get into the game with its new Metro interface and adopting Web html 5 as their development platform and possibly dropping their .Net platform.

But, its problem is that its Windows platform being so bulky and old fashion it is going to be a major effort to build a new one for hand held devices. On the contrary, Canonical has Linux, which being used for the majority of such devices and I don't expect MS to switch to it.

I believe if Ubuntu could have a tablet of their own to make sure of good driver support and follow similar steps as the KDE team by next year along with good customer support for many of FOSS applications (LibreOffice, Gimp, Inkscape & many of KDE apps), I think they have a good chance to make a good product that many will go for.

Mind you, those apps on tablets are not to use for heavy production of but simply to use for information consumption and light editing/modifications.

FOSS apps are key for many users to use tablets as a productive device and not for entertainment-leisure only while on the road.

@Fettoosh: I'm talking about apps, not UI. MS already has Metro on their phones, and the users aren't buying it, and the ISVs aren't writing for it. Their app store is much, much smaller than the iTunes and Android stores. MS can make the platform, but apparently just being MS is no longer sufficient to entice ISVs to develop for their platform. The ISVs are probably sick of MS's constant platform and API churn anyway: they keep making new and incompatible mobile OSes: WinCE, WinMo, now WinPhone7, and expecting everyone to follow along.

@caitlyn: Users don't care about licenses, but they certainly care about two things: 1) getting certain apps that are popular (e.g. Angry Birds), and 2) having a large selection of apps. A quick Google search shows that Angry Birds is actually the most popular app for WinPhone7, and there seems to be some disagreement whether they're going to bother making Angry Birds Space for the platform at all (some articles say yes, some say no; maybe Rovio changed their mind). Even then, that's not enough to make the platform popular, and the mixed signals from Rovio don't bode well for MS; if they're hesitant to spend time writing for the platform, what does that say about other ISVs who are less profitable and have fewer resources? Also, it turns out I forgot another platform: Symbian. Nokia's Ovi store is the 3rd-largest app store, behind Apple and Android. So an Ubuntu entry into the market would actually put it at #6.

Angry Birds isn't the only important app out there; there's tons of other popular games. People like to play games on their phones, such as when they're sitting somewhere (doctor's office waiting room?) and are bored. You talk about functionality, as if productivity apps are all that matter, and games aren't important. RIM tried that approach; look where it got them. I think games are even more important on phones than on PCs. With PCs, you don't really need games so much, because you can always just buy a console and use that for games. But you can't bring a console (and big-screen TV) with you to the doctor's office to play while you wait (which is also probably why simple games like Angry Birds are so popular on phones, and not highly involved games like FPSs).

Finally, where there's lots of FOSS apps out there, the development cycle on them is much longer, and none of them are optimized for small touchscreens. You could use them anyway, but it's not going to work well. Microsoft tried this approach with their previous mobile platforms; they looked and worked much like their desktop platform, and required a stylus to use. That didn't work out too well for them.