Linux giant Canonical said on Wednesday that it would release its own mobile operating system, joining a growing fray that includes Tizen and Firefox — and that’s not to mention the coming relaunch of the BlackBerry OS with version 10.
CNET’s Jessica Dolcourt has made her mind up in “No, we don’t really need another smartphone OS”:
Would you ever consider buying a smartphone running Ubuntu, Tizen, or Firefox as its operating system? For most of you, the answer is and will probably remain: no.
Why would you? Android and iOS fight for worldwide domination, with no signs of slowing down. Both have extremely well-developed ecosystems that make sharing information across services and even across individual handsets a fairly simple, unified process. App development is strong, and OS updates are regular enough to give phone owners new party tricks to show off.
Dolcourt also points out that: “Microsoft is still reaching deep into its pockets to secure double-digit market share…”
Why, then, with four operating systems competing for your attention, would anyone give a serious thought to a platform masterminded by the makers of a browser (Firefox), a hardware powerhouse that has an iffy software track record (Samsung’s Tizen), and a Linux OS that still hasn’t gone mainstream for desktops despite years of effort?
Canonical, which will launch its new mobile OS later this year or early next year, is designing it for use on ARM or x86 processors, and unlike Google’s Android, which is also based on Linux, it will not rely on Oracle’s Java Virtual Machine.
The company is also said to be “taking aim at Android’s fragmentation issue…,” IDG News reports. Canonical has promised to maintain the code base for multiple mobile platforms, the report said.
To prevent Ubuntu from fragmenting, Canonical built a set of frameworks that allow handset providers to insert their own content, apps and stylistic modifications to the OS. With these frameworks, handset providers can customize the operating system, while the base OS itself remains consistent across all handsets, which should please third party app developers.
With Ubuntu, Canonical is “trying to find a middle ground between the super-locked down proprietary approach and the anything-goes, prone-to-fragmentation approach,” Shuttleworth said, in an interview with the IDG News Service.
But the differentiation from Android is not 100%. “When developing the mobile OS, Canonical made sure that it can run all device drivers written for Android, which means phones that run Android could also run Ubuntu. ‘We wanted to reduce the costs to silicon companies and OEMs [that want to] experiment with Ubuntu,’ Shuttleworth [told IDG News].”
Join the conversation: Will you welcome Ubuntu to the mobile OS mix? With Google looking to shore up its fragmentation issues, will it be too little too late? Or will Ubuntu’s architecture — and ability to run on Android hardware — give it its place at the table?
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