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The mobile OS market has a new challenger — Canonical has unveiled the mobile version of Ubuntu, with plans to launch devices in early 2014. Ubuntu for phones is “Mobile industry ready,” meaning it will be easy for Android makers to adapt the OS and run it on their Android devices.
This is made possible because the mobile Ubuntu OS uses the same kernel and drivers as Android, avoiding incompatibility issues an all-new OS would normally bring. It also touts “No java overhead,” as it doesn’t use a Java Virtual Machine — allowing it to use “the full power of the phone.” It will also support both ARM and x86 processors.
The PC-centric roots of Ubuntu are also intact here, because you’ll be able to dock your Ubuntu phones to a monitor, keyboard and mouse and gain a “full PC experience.” Motorola tried this before and failed, but hopefully because of it’s PC background, Ubuntu will be able to succeed.
If you’ve got a Galaxy Nexus, downloaded images of the OS will be made available in the next few weeks for developers — and if like me, you like what you saw on the videos, official devices should be here in 2014. This is an exciting time for the mobile industry, because innovation and competition like this will only push to the current competitors to innovate as well.
