Verizon Joins Ubuntu's Smartphone Advisory Committee

Verizon (News - Alert) Wireless, a mobile network operator in the United States, has become the first U.S. carrier to join the Ubuntu Carrier Advisory Group, which makes a stateside launch for Canonical's open source smartphone platform.

Canonical is the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu project and the provider of support services for Ubuntu deployments in the enterprise.

Canonical has announced the Carrier Advisory Group in June as a forum.

This forum allows mobile operators to discuss Ubuntu for phones and help to develop marketplaces, payment mechanisms, and revenue-sharing models around the platform.

This forum is open to any national or multinational carrier who wishes to join.

Other members of this group are China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom (News - Alert), Everything Everywhere, Telecom Italia, Portugal Telecom, Indonesia's Smartfren, South Korea's LG U+, Korea Telecom, and SK Telecom.

Canonical has said that it plans to close the group to new members by the end of July.

Samir Vaidya, a member of Verizon's device technology team, said, “Verizon Wireless (News - Alert) is joining Ubuntu's Carrier Advisory Group to participate in technology discussions around this new platform, which has the ability to bring new and exciting features to developers and ultimately, customers.”

However, Verizon has not committed to releasing an Ubuntu phone, but many carriers have expressed interest in offering alternatives to the Android (News - Alert) and iOS devices that now dominate the smartphone market.

Ubuntu isn't their only option. The Mozilla Foundation is offering Firefox OS as an operating system for inexpensive smartphones targeting developing markets, and Tizen has the backing of the Linux Foundation and a number of prominent companies, most notably Samsung (News - Alert).

Canonical has promised that the first phones running the OS will be on the market in 2014.

According to stats from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, the two platforms command 93.9 per cent of all smartphone sales in the U.S.