Ubuntu Looks to Mobile Operating System for Tablets

Canonical has asked member developers to provide their thoughts and ideas on creating a mobile version of the popular Ubuntu operating system.

The company wants to jump into the mobile arena and create software that will run on smart phones, tablets, smart TV's by the year 2014.  By then, maybe most of the kinks that are in the Unity interface will have been worked out. Canonical still has plans to have a smoother user experience over the next few releases.

The Ubuntu user interface has gone through a lot of changes in the past few months. Mark Shuttleworth has received a lot of negative feedback since the introduction of the Unity interface.

It is likely that Canonical will have a tough time selling its Unity interface to tablet makers. It is unlikely hardware makers will be willing to stake their money on the Unity interface.  This interface is going to have  two more year worth of developing a 'bad reputation' by many unhappy and vocal Linux users.  It will not matter if things in Unity are going to get fixed, the damage has been done.

I suspect that the best the Canonical could hope for is to find some obscure Chinese company that makes cheap tablets to install  an Ubuntu operating system, and try to sell them on some obscure website that typical web surfers will never find.  Pretty much the same story for Canonical as it tried to enter the desktop and laptop OEM market a couple of years ago.

Maybe by 2014, things will be different....