By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
Don't look now but it looks like the mobile market for smartphones and tablets is going to get a lot more crowded. Linux stalwarts Ubuntu by Canonical are looking to expand beyond the desktop and into the more popular and emerging smartphone and tablet markets in 2012. What this means for consumers is possibly more choice of devices and likely lower cost of ownership given Ubuntu's open source nature.
Ubuntu has remained one of the more popular Linux distributions that is highly regarded for its ease of use, relatively low system requirements as well as solid community backing and support. Like most of Linux, however, it has fought a long and uphill battle for the desktop space.
A presence in mobile makes sense but only if the Ubuntu OS can be pared down to be actually useful on touch-enabled mobile devices and can at least approximate competing mobile operating systems, some of which have a four-year head start, an established developer community and a store and app ecosystem. Word on the street is that Ubuntu's owner Canonical has been in talks with a number of device manufacturers who may be interested in making phones or tablets running the mobile Ubuntu OS.