Novità in casa Canonical. Mark Shuttleworth ha rivelato la data di lancio del primo smartphone con Ubuntu Phone OS. La data del lancio sarà Ottobre 2013 in due grandi mercati geografici.

Smartphones running the open source Ubuntu operating system will be available to customers beginning in October 2013, according to Mark Shuttleworth, founder and CEO of Canonical Ltd. Canonical provides services for corporate customers using Ubuntu open source software. Application developers will have access to the smartphone operating system, which is optimized for the Galaxy Nexus handset manufactured by Samsung Electronics Co. , in late February.

Gli sviluppatori potranno aver accesso all'Ubuntu Phone OS dalla fine di Febbraio.
Non ci sono conferme sui mercati scelti per il lancio ma Mark ha sottolineato come il mercato Nord Americano sarà uno dei mercati strategici.

Mr. Shuttleworth said the new phone operating system will be available in two large geographic markets in October, and while he didn’t commit to North America being one of those, he said North America is “absolutely a key market for Ubuntu.” He said the operating system has drawn interest from carriers as well, many of which are eager to break up the smartphone market hegemony of Apple and Google. Mr. Shuttleworth declined to identify carrier or handset partners.
La notizia arriva da CIO Jurnal che aggiunge ulteriori dettagli sulla strategia intrapresa da Canonical:

"Ubuntu will be available on a full range of devices, including desktop and tablet computers, potentially providing corporate IT executives a way to reduce the number of devices they purchase and manage, and would allow users to access all manner of corporate data through a single, pocket-sized device. 'You can share Windows apps to the phone desktop,' said Mr. Shuttleworth during a meeting in New York Tuesday."

Come potete leggere Ubuntu sarà disponibile anche per tablet. Sarà inoltre possibile condividere applicazioni Windows sull'Ubuntu Phone.

In attesa di ulteriori dettagli spero vivamente che l'altro mercato sia quello europeo.