Yesterday, in a conference call with the press followed immediately by a public Town Hall with the community, Canonical announced the first two hardware manufacturers who are going to ship Ubuntu on smartphones!
Now many have speculated on why we think we can succeed where so many giants have failed. It’s a question we see quite a bit, actually. If Microsoft, RIM/Blackberry and HP all failed, what makes us think we can succeed? It’s simple math, really. We’re small. Yeah, that’s it, we’re just small.
Unlike those giants who tried and failed, we don’t need to dominate the market to be successful. Even just 1% of the market would be enough to sustain and continue the development of Ubuntu for phones, and probably help cover the cost of developing it for desktops too. The server side is already paying for itself. Because we’re small and diversified, we don’t need to win big in order to win at all. And 1%, that’s a very reachable target.