# The Ubuntu Forum Community > Ubuntu Community Discussions > Mobile Technology Discussions >  First Ubuntu Phone OEM?

## 3rdalbum

Which company do you think will make the first Ubuntu Phones (for October release) and why?

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## Snow Bambi

I wish it would be Samsung who'd do so, but lately I got the vague feeling that one of the big firms wont settle up to ubuntu since android is actually the best thing out there..  :Capital Razz:

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## pompel9

I hope it is huawei. They make good phones at reasonable prices.

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## 3rdalbum

I think it could be Huawei. They already have lots of good Android phones but are desperately trying to grow their marketshare. Trying something new like Ubuntu, with Android phones as their fallback, may be right up their alley.

My other guess is Alcatel-Lucent. Currently with no marketshare and only low-end phones. They are rumoured to be looking at playing with the big boys in mobile and releasing some high-end phones, maybe for the business market, without having to compete head on with Samsung (which is why Canonical is now talking about streaming Windows apps to your phone).

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## gb74

Well first of all, I wouldn't count on seeing any OEM mobile devices until 1st Qtr 2014. However, I've been a Samsung fan since I did my first Google search for "largest smartphones available by screen size". So I'm really hoping something happens there. The Galaxy Nexus is already one of the phones presently supported by the dev releases back in February.

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## tgalati4

Nokia could use a decent smart phone.

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## vrettasvasilis

huawei phones are not good, they promise a lot and last fro maximum 3 months mate!

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## tancrackers

I would think probably Samsung. They seem to be trying to get bigger into the market themselves.

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## wholmen

What about Asus? 

All their concepts are very similar to what Chanonical wants (bringing down the barriers between phone/tablet/pc)

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## mr john

It probably should've been Blackberry, but they seem content with sending their brand into obscurity. They've put all their bets on Blackberry OS 10, but the whole world is moving to Android. 

I don't see why any company would move from Android to Ubuntu at this stage. Android already has a massive ecosystem on mobile devices, Ubuntu only has a non-functional prototype. It's a no-brainer.

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## ugm6hr

> I think it could be Huawei. They already have lots of good Android phones but are desperately trying to grow their marketshare. Trying something new like Ubuntu, with Android phones as their fallback, may be right up their alley.
> 
> My other guess is Alcatel-Lucent. Currently with no marketshare and only low-end phones. They are rumoured to be looking at playing with the big boys in mobile and releasing some high-end phones, maybe for the business market, without having to compete head on with Samsung (which is why Canonical is now talking about streaming Windows apps to your phone).


It seems you've answered your own question with the most likely contenders... Although I would have put these as probable Firefox OS OEMs aiming at the low end.

Ubuntu is trying to position itself as a corporate mobile in the current "take your work with you" approach to employment. I suspect that unknown brands with a reputation for low cost will not be the right fit.

I wonder if some of the recent losers in the Android sphere (to Samsung) who are keen to try something else might be possibilities: HTC are reinventing themselves, and were not afraid to dabble with Windows phones; perhaps LG also?

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## SeijiSensei

In the US at least, I do not see much if any market for an Ubuntu phone.  First, you'd have to sway the carriers to sell and support these phones as nearly everyone buys a package that includes the phone with the cell service.  After all the efforts by Verizon, ATT, T-Mobile and the like to push first the iPhone, then Android devices, and now Windows Phones to customers, do you really think they will undertake supporting yet another operating system with no visibility in the marketplace? I suspect they would have been happier to see Microsoft stay out of the phone business, but they have no choice about whether to support Windows Phone.  The same can hardly be said about supporting Ubuntu.

Then there is the whole question of apps.  Will Ubuntu phone allow me to run, say, Android apps simply by going to to the Google Play store and installing them?  Microsoft already faces this problem with Windows Phone, and it sure as hell has a lot more leverage to encourage app development than Ubuntu ever will.  

Carriers also don't like devices that give their users "too much" control.  The US cell phone industry is dominated by the carriers.  That may not be so true in other parts of the world.

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## pompel9

> huawei phones are not good, they promise a lot and last fro maximum 3 months mate!


I bought my Huawei 6 months ago. I have had no problems with it.

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## macjim

I'm hoping for the phone software to be available for me to install onto my Galaxy S3 as I bought it expressly to get Ubuntu Phone onto it. I got fed up with iOS and I hate Google Android.

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## heat33330

> Nokia could use a decent smart phone.


You must be living under a rock.  :Eh?:

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## 3rdalbum

> You must be living under a rock.


I agree with them. Nokia could use a decent smartphone, and I'm fully aware of their Lumina products. Good hardware, horrible software; ironically this was the reason Nokia failed so badly with their Symbian phones. The only real difference is that the user interface of the Symbian phones was more pleasing to the eye than the garish flat colours of Windows Phone 8.

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## tgalati4

If Nokia can't get any traction into the market place with a Windows8 phone, then perhaps jumping to Ubuntu would be a logical choice.  If a company is floundering and making bad decisions, what is to say that it won't continue to make bad decisions?  Ubuntu phone is a "thinking-outside-the-box" solution that could help them.  I still have my Nokia n800.  They dabbled in open-source before.

The Nokia Win8 phone reminds me of another successful product:  Zune

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## Mikeb85

My guess would be ZTE, Huawei, Alcatel or Micromax, or maybe even Geeksphone (they're making Firefox OS phones).

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## Sharft 6

> I bought my Huawei 6 months ago. I have had no problems with it.


Had my Huawei for 28 months now. Has a shattered screen, exposed circuitry, and water damage. Every feature still seems to work on it though  :Smile: . The only difference is the alert light always glows bright red unless the battery has been dead for a few weeks. I would buy another when this one actually dies.

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## pompel9

> Had my Huawei for 28 months now. Has a shattered screen, exposed circuitry, and water damage. Every feature still seems to work on it though . The only difference is the alert light always glows bright red unless the battery has been dead for a few weeks. I would buy another when this one actually dies.


That is remarkable. Seems that huawei makes good quality phones  :Smile:

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## zach.detton

I've read that Nokia is unhappy with Windows Phone and are looking at making devices with other OSs. I also think Dell and HTC might test the waters as well.

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## spladd

> I've read that Nokia is unhappy with Windows Phone and are looking at making devices with other OSs. I also think *Dell* and HTC might test the waters as well.


This.  Dell is already offering products with Ubuntu installed, who's to say that they don't want to attempt to re-enter the mobile industry?

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## Nr90

http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/28/43...oid-smartphone

LG seems unhappy with the google/apple duopoly.
They even mention Ubuntu as an alternative in the article.

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## scubascooby

I just started looking at a replacement for my Palm, having only ever  owned a PDA/smartphone and never "just a phone". Androids are all  the rage but one glance at their attitude to harvesting your data tells  me to run away.



Hopefully Ubuntu won't go down this  route all though the video I just watched does say that all your data will vanish into "the cloud" which I always read as some dodgy country with a poor attitude to data security and a govt keen to collect as much data about everyone as they can.

It's a mobile device, it doesn't need to keep any of my data anywhere but on the device. If I want to back-up then I can use an SD card or my home computer. 

If Ubuntu took this line they would quicky gain enthusiastic following among those of us  who don't want all and sundry slicing and dicing every aspect of our  lives. If they want to make money then I for one would happily pay a  small premium on the contract or data usage.

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## 3rdalbum

> It's a mobile device, it doesn't need to keep any of my data anywhere but on the device. If I want to back-up then I can use an SD card or my home computer. 
> 
> If Ubuntu took this line they would quicky gain enthusiastic following among those of us  who don't want all and sundry slicing and dicing every aspect of our  lives. If they want to make money then I for one would happily pay a  small premium on the contract or data usage.


Gaining an enthusiastic following amongst a handful of people, and simultaneously turning away everyone else, is not the way to make a successful product.

While you may feel paranoid about having your data stored anywhere other than your phone, the majority of the rest of us like having our data automatically backed up. When your phone's OS won't start up anymore, or you experience hardware failure and have to buy a new phone, it can really hurt to lose those important notes and phone numbers you stored safely in your phone two days ago.

I back up my SD card manually every month, but my contacts, SMSes, mail, calendar and notes are stored in the cloud. And I tell you what, I've had my phone's OS stop working and need reflashing, and lost my contacts. Then I decided to use Android's automatic cloud storage this time, and when the same thing happened again I didn't need to lift a finger to get all my data back.

If the Ubuntu phone didn't automatically back up my contacts in the cloud, I wouldn't buy one. It would be too big a step backward.

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## Nr90

> Hopefully Ubuntu won't go down this  route all though the video I just watched does say that all your data will vanish into "the cloud" which I always read as some dodgy country with a poor attitude to data security and a govt keen to collect as much data about everyone as they can.


Like the US?  :Popcorn: 


I fully agree with the poster above me, cloud sync is a must-have feature.

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## scubascooby

My post above was very timely.  :Smile: 

The cloud won't really be of much use if you spend long periods in areas without even phone connectivity. I have had Palm devices for about 17 years but never had any requirement to have my data held anywhere but on the phone. I backed up about twice a year to a PIM but never had to use it to recover due to lost data. Where is the advantage in having the data held remotely ? Why would a cloud-free device "turn away" other users ? If the Apps are designed properly then there is no need for remote storage. This is the mistake that Palm made with WebOS.

The people in your address book didn't agree to have their data shared with anyone but you so you shouldn't allow it to be uploaded to random server that it going to be accessed by any govt that feels like it.

If you do a quick 'net search for "android without google account" you will see a large number of people with a poor attitude to data security. It really is quite disturbing that they consider it acceptable for google to gain access to all their data. Even Orwell would be shocked by this level of intrusion.

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## 3rdalbum

> My post above was very timely.


Yes, it certainly was: Our perception of the world changed a lot in the last few days.




> The cloud won't really be of much use if you spend long periods in areas without even phone connectivity.


Data is usually stored on the device, but sync'ed to the cloud. If you live in an area without phone connectivity, then not only will cloud backup be useless, but your phone will be only slightly more useful than a Filofax. We're talking about Ubuntu Phone here, not old-school PDAs. Even if you only get a few minutes of connectivity a week, that's enough to do cloud backup or cloud restore.




> The people in your address book didn't agree to have their data shared with anyone but you so you shouldn't allow it to be uploaded to random server that it going to be accessed by any govt that feels like it.
> 
> If you do a quick 'net search for "android without google account" you will see a large number of people with a poor attitude to data security. It really is quite disturbing that they consider it acceptable for google to gain access to all their data. Even Orwell would be shocked by this level of intrusion.


George Orwell was a bit of a loony-bin, actually. He used to write letters to the Prime Minister in which he listed all the people in public society who he suspected of being communists.

I don't mind Google having knowledge about who is on my contacts list, what menial little tasks are in my calendar and even where my phone was at any given point in time. I don't want the NSA to have this information, though, because there's no benefit to me and the potential for abuse is much greater than it would be with Google alone. I'd have to think about if I still want things backed up to Google. The benefits of "lose your phone or the phone dies, don't worry all your data will just appear on the new phone" are still pretty good and definitely attract people to Android. I wouldn't buy an Ubuntu Phone if there was no option for cloud sync.

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## scubascooby

If you really need cloud services then you could sign up for a service, download a suitable app and off you go. There is absolutely no need for it to be mandatory.

Also you must remember that the people in your address book didn't agree to have their data spread across the internet. It's not your data and data protection laws probably apply.

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## 3rdalbum

> If you really need cloud services then you could sign up for a service, download a suitable app and off you go. There is absolutely no need for it to be mandatory.


No, and it's not mandatory on Android either.




> Also you must remember that the people in your address book didn't agree to have their data spread across the internet. It's not your data and data protection laws probably apply.


Phone numbers are not private information, and I'm not spreading it across the internet, I'm storing it in a cloud service. It's like if I borrow my friend's towel when I'm going to the pool, and I store it in one of those little lockers. I'm not "spreading the towel around the pool", I'm storing it in a fairly secure place only I can access. Oh sure, the managers of the pool can probably open the locker with a master key if they desired, but they are hardly likely to do that.

However I'd be uncomfortable if the NSA forced the managers of the pool to open all the lockers so they could inspect the contents, because that's an invasion of my right to privacy in a space that is secured.

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