Canonical has recently shared some news in regards to the Ubuntu Edge Indiegogo campaign. It seems they have crossed the $10 million milestone, which means they now have the “world’s biggest ever fixed crowdfunding campaign.” Or for those curious, this means the Ubuntu Edge smartphone has now raised more than the $10,266,845 that was raised by Pebble.
The interesting thing here, while raising that amount brought success for the folks at Pebble, it probably doesn’t mean quite as much for the folks at Canonical. Simply put, despite breaking this record the Ubuntu Edge campaign is still sitting way short of the ultimate goal of $32 million. This Indiegogo is showing a total raised of $10,448,195 with 6 days remaining.
It still remains to be seen whether they will reach the ultimate goal, however in the meantime there was some word on where those backers were coming from. The Canonical team has said the top contributing nations include the US and UK followed by Germany, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, Sweden, France, Switzerland and Norway. The campaign also made some adjustments to the pledge levels.
Looking back and we saw the price for individual backers drop to $695. This came as a result of “major industry backing” and included the smartphone as well as a listing on the Ubuntu Edge Founders page and a one-year subscription to Last Pass Premium. That industry backing looks to have been Bloomberg who pledged $80,000 for the Enterprice 100 perk.
While that pledge level may have been good for a larger business, it looks like an option for a smaller business has also been added. This latest is the Enterprise Starter Kit and includes 10 phones with access to an online workshop and 14 days of online support for $7,000. With that, it looks like the next few days will be a deciding factor in terms of whether the Ubuntu Edge will live or die.
SOURCE: Ubuntu Edge Indiegogo
I think its probably going to die, but I hope they find a way to make this work anyway. This is a great idea.
a lot of first-gen electronics need to take a loss for some large portion of their early sales; at ~$700 per unit canonical may have built in some profit that can be cycled back into the fundraising campaign by having canonical themselves ledge a large portion of the remainder.
of course, i doubt the profit (even at $700 per) is enough to cover 2/3 of the initial funding goal. and i also wonder if this practice (completing the funding themselves) would be frowned upon, or rejoiced over. i suppose it depends on whether backers feel that they were over charged?