We caught up with Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth to find out why he
chose to partner with lesser-known manufacturers Meizu and BQ.
Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth.
(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET)
BARCELONA, Spain -- The first Ubuntu phones will launch in the
autumn, and will be "astonishingly great in some areas" and "weak in
others" -- but the software "outperforms" Microsoft, according to Ubuntu
founder Mark Shuttleworth.
Ubuntu-powered versions of the Meixu MX3 and BQ Aquaris smartphones will
debut in the third quarter of this year. I sat down with Shuttleworth,
the face of British company Canonical, the people behind Ubuntu, at
phone and
tablet extravaganza
Mobile World Congress, where he revealed why Ubuntu is launching with partners Meizu and BQ.
"Our first generation of phones will be astonishingly great in some
areas," Shuttleworth explained, "but will come across as weak in others.
So if we get them into the right hands, people can celebrate the things
we're really great at while we buff up the app catalogue and improve in
other areas.
"We won't have 650,000 apps in the app store, so we'll get the phone in the hands of people who don't care about that first."
So why Meizu and BQ, names which may be unfamiliar to many phone
fans? "We are at board level with quite a few household names," said
Shuttleworth, "but with much larger institutions we're going to be a
smaller part of the strategic picture when we launch. So we wanted to go
out with two companies that are the right size to make a material
commitment, and also are two companies that are very passionate about
placing the right device in the right hands...companies that are
established at getting into difficult, entrenched, or congested markets
with something that feels fresh for the right people at the right time
-- and both of them have that.
"BQ in Europe has taken good share by concentrating on design,
by knowing very clearly who they're designing for, and then thinking
very carefully about the retail strategy.
"And Meizu in China, again, they've really cracked into the market by
building loyalty, they've identified a particular segment, and they've
been really great at working to do something those guys are passionate
about. They call that segment 'digital lifestyle': typically younger,
typically edgier, typically more conscious of what's new and cool -- and
less likely to buy from a bulk manufacturer."
The two phones
will be available to order from anywhere in the world, but they're built
by local, rather than global, brands. "China is super-important,"
Shuttleworth said. "Europe is interesting as well. We have carriers in
the US, but we'll focus on these two markets, these two manufacturers
for this year and this launch."
What do the phones offer? "The
hardware is pretty standout," he said. "Both companies have access to
pretty top-notch design and manufacturing -- and they care about it.
What you care about goes into the product, and both of them really care
about the feel of the device. I think we'll be outstanding in several
areas of the UX: A lot of people say compared to
Android it feels really beautiful, compared to
Firefox it feels really fluid and fast. So I think we'll stand out."
Appsolutely fabulous
And how is Ubuntu encouraging the app situation in the
meantime? "We make it easy for app developers to care about Ubuntu,"
Shuttleworth said. "If you care about something but it's hard, you can't
do anything; if it's easy, you can do something about it. We've refined
it so that any app developer team can have one or two people who really
care about Ubuntu, and we've done that by looking at the toolsets
people use to develop for Android and iOS and made sure we're well
lined-up to make it easy to use those toolsets...We're perfectly aligned
with Google and Apple so if you've got an HTML5 app that works with
Android or iOS, it will work with Ubuntu, with only a tiny amount of
friction that just one person can take care of.
"In the native applications, we've got pretty good traction in
gaming because lots of games companies are targeting Ubuntu. In
productivity apps, we're looking at ways to make it easy for Android
apps to come to Ubuntu. And we've got a nice big catalogue of apps that
are Java apps and Linux apps."
Livin' on the Edge
One phone we won't see become a reality anytime soon is
the Ubuntu Edge, which Canonical attempted to crowdfund last year -- to
the tune of an eye-watering $32 million. Said Shuttleworth: "Our story
is of convergence, and manufacturers said, 'There's no market for that.'
We said, 'You can test that.' They said, '
You test it.' So we did! They were completely surprised by the amount of attention we received."
So the campaign may have sent a message to manufacturers, but
Shuttleworth doesn't consider it a success. "I didn't set out to miss
the target...We missed by a record. We set a record with what we raised,
but we missed by a record too! It's clear that Kickstarter for hardware
is very challenging."
Catching Firefox
This time last year, we
voted the then-named Ubuntu Touch as our best product of MWC 2013,
narrowly squeezing out Firefox OS. Since then, Firefox has popped up on
an assortment of phones, while actual Ubuntu hardware is conspicuous by
its absence. But Shuttleworth doesn't want to rush into anything:
"Sometimes it's worth getting in fast, and sometimes it's worth getting
it right. I think the most fatal thing for a manufacturer, early on in
the adoption of a new product, is high return rates at low margins. Word
on the street (about Firefox) is high return rates, low margins."
"It would be lovely to have a carrier come to us and say, "OK, we're
just going to swamp the market with your phones," but the blowback, if
40 percent of those devices come back, would be catastrophic.
Catastrophic. If you have a manufacturer on a 5 percent margin, and half
the devices come back, you've got a massive loss. You can try and
refurbish them, recycle, but it's a real mess.
"That's led us to be very careful about our launch partners,
perhaps taking a little longer to refine the design, and the feedback
that we get is that it's worth doing that. I don't think we'll regret
that thoughtfulness."
Ultimately, Ubuntu is about convergence: the same operating
system seamlessly working across devices, from PC to tablet to
smartphone and beyond. "There are lots of bright people who have built
good mobile experiences," said Shuttleworth. "I think what's profoundly
different about ours is it's part of this convergence family. We've
significantly raised the bar for people who have that vision.
"Microsoft
has that vision: that you can have a family of interfaces that give you
the ability to use different devices with a common theme and common
values...Of all people I can appreciate how difficult it must have been
for Microsoft, but I still think we've outperformed them in terms of
bringing that convergence story to be a reality.
"This is not
the end of the disruptions: As we move into a wearable era, the story
that we've been telling -- of personal computing co-opting all of the
glass around you in appropriate ways -- becomes the interesting story.
At its heart you've got to have a platform that appropriates whatever's
around it. That's the story we've been consistently building towards."
