Ubuntu Edge hopes dwindle as campaign hits halfway mark
The Ubuntu Edge is halfway through its £21.5m crowdfunding campaign but looks unlikely to hit its target.
The Ubuntu Edge is halfway through its £21.5m crowdfunding campaign, but with two thirds of the target amount still outstanding, the dual-booting phone looks unlikely to ever become a reality.
With two weeks to go, British company Canonical has received pledges from phone fans totalling less than a third of the target required to get the Ubuntu Edge into production.
The Edge has 15 days left to raise the remainder, an eye-watering £15.26m.
The Edge made a solid start on Indiegogo, trousering over £2m of funding overnight on a wave of press attention and support from phone fans. But momentum has slowed: the campaign edged towards £5m by day 10 but has only crept over that mark today.
Still, there's always the possibility of a last-minute surge as Canonical adds new rewards.
Indiegogo is a site that invites you the public to pledge money to a project before it's completed. If the creator sets a target amount and that much is raised, the project proceeds. If it doesn't reach the target, the project is cancelled and nobody hands over any money.
The Ubuntu Edge is a proposed smart phone showing off both Android and Ubuntu software for mobile phones. Canonical wants to build 40,000 phones, and offers an Edge to people pledging £532 or more.
Has Canonical overreached by setting such an ambitious target? What can smart phones learn from the Edge? Tell me your thoughts in the comments or take it to the edge of our Facebook wall.