Can someone explain to the reason Canonical is pushing into the phone and television market so much? At the latest UDS this was perhaps the biggest announcement… Ubuntu was going to make a phone and a tv and I still don’t understand the point.
On the TV side one of the worlds largest computer companies Google has tried to do a TV. The Logitech Google TV tanked causing the company to loose MILLIONS of dollars betting on the device and yet Canonical is trying to make a TV? Why? Can someone explain the point of having Ubuntu on a TV, in fact can someone explain to me why I want my TV to become a computer, complete with apps etc? I don’t want to play Angry Birds on my TV, or tweet while watching some show from some complex keyboard. If I want Angry Birds I’ll do it from my phone or iPad, or I can tweet from my phone, my iPad and my laptop. Do I want to have a discussion over IRC on my TV? Nope I’ll use my laptop do that… The goal might be to watch Youtube on my TV? But I can do that from my Boxee box and even play all kinds of media on that device. What is the goal?
Onto the phone… Ubuntu phone will be dead in the water in the States w/o 2 things. #1 being a major carrier like AT&T or Verizon pushing the sales of it (Verizon already doesn’t push Windows Phone 7 devices hence the scarcity of the them, so Ubuntu phone will be just another phone not to sell). The second thing is out of the box Exchange Active Sync. People want a smartphone they can get their work email on and it seems most people use Exchange at work.
Without having a major carrier and Exchange support out of the box the phone will be dead in the US. It will have less of a market share than RIM or Windows Phone 7 does. Sorry Canonical, still not understanding the desire to be there.
Also w/ WebOS now open source does this all matter?
