Ubuntu Edge Raises $10 Million on Indiegogo
Impressive, but still not enough.
Canonical's Edge smartphone campaign on Indiegogo has successfully raised over $10.8 million. Last we heard, Canonical had lowered the price of its smartphone in an effort to boost funding. The company recently lowered the price of the Edge to $695 instead of the full $830 price set when the Ubuntu Edge Indiegogo project launched on July 22. Though the $10 million figure is nothing to sniff at, it's more than a smidgen shy of the project's $32 million goal, and with only five days left in the campaign, it's unlikely Canonical will raise the money it had hoped for.
The campaign expires on August 21. However, Canonical is hopeful that the attention Edge is receiving will attract the interest of manufacturers. Last week, Bloomberg became the first corporate backer, pledging $80,000. Canonical notes that it has also broken the record for largest ever amount sourced from crowdfunding (previously held by Pebble Watch over Kickstarter with $10,266,844). Since the phone doesn't actually exist yet, we're reluctant to tear the title away from Pebble, but if Canonical manages to attract a big name investor, that could change.
"When we started this campaign three weeks ago, we hoped it would resonate with our community. So, to break the world record for a crowdfunding campaign is absolutely mind-blowing," said Canonical CEO Jane Silber. "We felt that innovation had substantially slowed down in the mobile industry, so wanted to address this. We're still astonished by the generosity of our community and will continue to do all we can to make the Ubuntu Edge a reality."
The Ubuntu Edge will offer dual-boot support, allowing the user to load up either Ubuntu Mobile or Android. However, when docked with a monitor, the phone will transform into a full Ubuntu desktop. Because of this, not only will it need the latest and fastest components, but 128 GB of storage by default. The company also expects to use a quad-core SoC and at least 4 GB of RAM.
Now, we have quad-core phones with apps that barely know how to use properly use 1 core and how to barely use 2 cores.
The closest thing to optimisation now is Windows Phone 7.8 and 8. Mostly all apps run on 1 GHz CPUs and 256 ram, and if not, on Dual-Core 1 GHz cpus and 512 ram. Everything!
You can't get it for $5.
Why should it be priced at $99? Do you know where to get a similar device for that price? If you do then please do, then tell me where to find it! If you're just trolling, then I suggest you get off your computer a go get a life...
Also your mathematical skills are awesome, considering you can't tell the difference between a market share of about 1% with 0.01%. And that is while excluding Android, because whether you like it or not Android is Linux. And if Linux is that bad why on earth are tons of mission critical servers running linux? Why is the backbone of the internet almost entirely comprised of linux/unix servers?
The specs aren't finalised, so it can't really be outdated. It will get whatever is available at the time of production that fits within the production budget.
The Ubuntu Edge is a capable phone that can, surprisingly, actually call people. Now that I think about it, I haven't come across a phone that doesn't have this functionality.
If they're referring to crowdfunding and not just specificly to Kickstarter/Indiegogo campaigns, then Star Citizen has them beat by quite a large margin.
Over a period of months, not days, and using at least 2 crowdfunding campaigns. Hardly a fair comparison. If Canonical ran two campaigns for the next 6 months they would quite easily exceed 15M.
Over a period of months, not days, and using at least 2 crowdfunding campaigns. Hardly a fair comparison. If Canonical ran two campaigns for the next 6 months they would quite easily exceed 15M.
I agree completely! But it was a vague statement in the first place and as a result open to quite broad interpretation.