Rumors about the Ubuntu phones for the US market

Dear media (especially you guys over at Softpedia): I’m just a random guy on the Internet spreading rumors. Random guys on the Internet are NOT reliable sources for news articles. Please do go and confirm these rumors with Canonical.

We all know that lots of people living in the United States of America are waiting to buy an Ubuntu phone. Well, looks like that won’t be happening any time soon. I had the chance to get some non-confidential information out of somebody at Canonical, and this is the full story regarding the plans for the US market as I understand it.

Canonical has not been talking to a single US manufacturer, as it always sounded like, but to two. The original plan was that one of these OEMs would announce a device on the US market by June 2015, but that obviously didn’t happen. From what it looks like, the project never entered development stage. Talks with both OEMs are still ongoing, but there’s no commitment from either side yet, and getting a new device to the market takes time, so I don’t think that we will see an US device in 2015.

The following information seems to be clear:

• It will not be Meizu nor bq, neither can provide hardware that supports all US frequency bands, and neither have FCC approval for their devices.
• Both OEMs are already selling devices on the US market.
• It’s not System76 nor Dell.