Ubuntu ‘superphone’ needs a superstrategy

No doubt you’ve heard about Ubuntu Touch, the open source mobile OS for touchscreens currently in development by Ubuntu’s owner Canonical. Ubuntu Touch is a variant of the Linux distro powering “superphones that are also full PC.” I had the opportunity to discuss the Ubuntu phone project with Jono Bacon, a community manager employed by Canonical. You can watch the full discussion with Jono on FLOSS Weekly 252.

What we’ve heard about Ubuntu Phone so far is mostly positive. Almost universally, people say it looks gorgeous — a phrase you’ve often heard associated with Apple products but less so with Linux products. It uses screen real estate innovatively and well. There’s no waste due to universally required buttons or icons, since the various edges of the screen stand in as universal start points to summon menus and start searches.

In terms of development, progress is still in an early stage. Bacon said the internal team at Canonical has reached the “dog-fooding stage,” running Ubuntu Phone on their own devices in order to become familiar with its strengths and weaknesses. That’s a step beyond the developer preview released at the end of February, but it’s a long way from being even as finished as Firefox OS, which is available on an actual device via Geeksphone (when they have stock; demand is high). While Canonical wants to raise Ubuntu Phone to a comparable shipping quality by the fall this year, the shipping date remains elusive.

It’s cool and real. But is it Linux? Bacon told me it is. It’s using the Linux kernel from Android, but otherwise there’s plenty of code in common with the rest of Ubuntu. It has shared user interface concepts in the Unity desktop, and applications running on the phone are real Linux applications. It’s even possible to run development tools on the phone if needed.

In addition to native applications, it offers the QML declarative language from the Qt framework, and it supports HTML5 apps complete with extensions to allow access to native resources like notifications and the system tray. As a consequence, it should be able to draw on a variety of existing developer communities to populate the device with apps and content.

In particular, the growing strength of open source mobile development is comfortably within Canonical’s reach. For handling app packages, Canonical is considering a new package manager in place of apt-get, discovering like others before that all the existing Linux package managers have serious flaws in a networked, multi-user age of end-user installs. They could perhaps collaborate with other systems like Jolla to devise a multiplatform package format, but for now they are plotting their own path.

One surprising omission is a strategy for actually building a market for apps and content. When I asked Bacon about plans for an app store for Ubuntu Phone (or even for the larger Ubuntu Touch project), he told me Canonical considers the lack of an app store to be a strength. Users can simply sync all their apps, music, and photos with Canonical’s proprietary Ubuntu One service, rather than needing to go to a store. That leaves important questions unaddressed. How do users of the device find new apps or content? How do they browse in general subject or genre areas? More important, what motivation is there for developers to create apps for Ubuntu Phone if there’s no way for users to find them and buy them?

Bacon had no answers to these questions, suggesting a lack of focus on the one element that made both iOS and Android succeed: app developers. These days, it’s no longer devices alone that drive the mobile market — it’s devices plus the app store that animates them and gives them a purpose. Today’s mobile user expects a highly customized and personal phone, and app stores aggregate this long tail of customisation into solid markets. Without an app store, Ubuntu Phone is dead in the water. I’m sure this will be fixed, but whatever store Canonical launches will need to differentiate from the iOS and Android stores to be viable — lower cost, faster vetting, or more accountability and transparency would all be strengths.

There’s no store to attract app developers. What about other community involvement? Ubuntu has a strong community of advocates and end-users as you’d expect, but I was told Ubuntu Touch in general and the Phone project in particular are by far the most community-friendly open source option for phone. Unlike Android, which is developed opaquely and in-house by Google, Ubuntu Phone is available for developers from mobile carriers and device manufacturers to engage without needing to first start a commercial relationship with Canonical, according to Bacon.

That all sounds very promising. With a cool and genuinely innovative design, a range of options for app development, and a genuinely open community, Ubuntu Phone could be a real contender. But in which market? Probably not the emerging markets of the world, where the lower power of devices and the lower spending ability of consumers will favor old MIDP phones or new HTML5 devices like the ones Firefox OS will power.

Bacon took pains to say Ubuntu Phone is not targeting the same markets as Firefox. That leaves head-to-head conflict with industry giants Apple and Google and their huge, interconnected ecosystems. Third place is already hotly contended, with both Microsoft and BlackBerry trying to make markets remember they were once an option. Can Canonical capture any of that market? Bacon was as upbeat as ever in his replies, but that remains the key question. He pointed out that the whole mobile market rotates on a three- to five-year cycle, and Ubuntu Phone could well be able to drive the next change.

Whether that will work out is anyone’s guess. Canonical is taking a huge gamble that will require considerable skill — to harness business drive and open source community support, as well as answer the needs of mobile carriers and device vendors. But with the innovation and design passion they’re putting in, they’re certainly making a good run of it.

This article, “Ubuntu ‘superphone’ needs a superstrategy,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of the Open Sources blog and follow the latest developments in open source at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.