Thursday, August 22, 2013

The Ubuntu Edge failed its crowd funding campaign, but I don't think that's an entirely bad thing

A few hours ago, despite a very great attempt by Canonical and some big companies such as the Bloomberg, the Ubuntu Edge has failed to reach it's 32 million USD goal, ending up with just a mere $12,809,906 pledged instead. While the goal was pretty far from being reached, there's a lot more proven about this effort than just not reaching the goal.

Publicity
Even though the funding goal wasn't reached, the Ubuntu Edge got a lot of press coverage. This is probably one of the few times that Ubuntu has ever gotten so much attention from the general press. So even though the funding goal wasn't met, millions of people have now been exposed to Ubuntu and what its goals are. I'm sure gaining more users would be a good thing for Canonical.

Experience
Going forward, Canonical has learned a lot from its first (unsuccessful) crowd funding campaign. I'm sure they had their share of learning how to price things correctly, as well has learning to get things right the first time, to maximize contributes.

One of the biggest points that can be the reason why their efforts failed was because at first there were multiple tiers of Ubuntu Edge's, all at varying prices. All included the same package, so why pay 10, 20, or even more dollars for the same thing? Canonical fixed this by having a fixed price Ubuntu Edge later on for all, but the damage was already done. In the future, I'm sure they have learned from that and won't be making a mistake like that again.

Demand
Despite the campaigns failure, carriers and device manufacturers alike can now see how much demand is for a Ubuntu touch device, or a device with the goals of the Ubuntu Edge device itself. Innovations such as sapphire glass were good to see on Edge, and I'm sure after this campaign many makers of smartphones will look for adding that technology to their phones as well.

Possibly More?
Above is 3 big points I noted about what I think can be said about the campaign. If you have any more points to add, post them in the comments below.