Canonical is heading into the weekend with about $6.6 million (about £4.29m, AU$7.14m) raised for the Ubuntu Edge, not a shabby number for the superphone's five-day old Indiegogo campaign.
We chatted with Mark Shuttleworth, the software company's founder, on the day Edge was announced, discussing this "concept car" device and the potential of crowdfunding as a mechanism for spurring innovation. We also dived into converging computing, which the Edge aims to accomplish by having serving as the "brain" of a PC.
Still...
Canonical is clearly trying to draw its own path with Ubuntu and the Edge, but Shuttleworth wasn't without a degree of deference for Microsoft's efforts.
"Microsoft has clearly articulated a design vision that's designed to expand across platforms," he said. "As much criticism as the [Windows 8] has taken, I have to agree with them. It recognizes it needs to make a bold foundation. It's very difficult to make bold transitions like that without tickling somebody's nose hairs."
Ubuntu is in its early mobile device days - the Edge won't even be out until May 2014 - but we could be in for an interesting OS war that's for once not Android and iOS.
- Speaking of Android, had a gander at Android 4.3 yet?
