Verizon joins Ubuntu's potential smartphone launch partners
Verizon will help “shape” Ubuntu phone OS, possibly sell the phones. Verizon Wireless today joined Canonical's “Ubuntu Carrier Advisory Group (CAG),” meaning the company is exploring smartphones based on Ubuntu.
Context & Ripple Effects
Verizon has spent six years hedging its bets on mobile operating systems rather than committing to one: the carrier embraced Google's Android in December 2007, and through 2012 it was still being asked whether it would throw its weight behind Windows Phone — questions it answered by confirming multiple Windows Phones in Q4. Joining Canonical's Ubuntu Carrier Advisory Group extends that same portfolio logic to a fourth platform.
The timing matters because Verizon enters 2013 with a full slate of alternative-OS devices already confirmed — an HTC One variant launched in June, the BlackBerry Q10 alongside Sprint and T-Mobile, and the Lumia 928 pushed hard in advertising — while Canonical is still pre-hardware for Ubuntu phone. The story drew unusually wide same-day pickup across ZDNet, PC World, The Verge, CNET, The Register, IntoMobile and InfoWorld, reflecting how much weight a single top-tier US carrier lends a nascent OS.
First-order effects
- Canonical gains a top-tier US carrier inside the CAG to 'shape' Ubuntu phone OS before launch, addressing the distribution question that has kept every post-iOS/Android platform carrier-dependent.
- Verizon secures advisory influence and a possible sales channel over a fourth OS, at zero exclusivity cost — it can drop the effort without penalty if no compelling hardware emerges.
Second-order effects
- Fellow CAG members face competitive pressure: if Verizon helps steer Ubuntu toward US network requirements, other carriers either deepen their own involvement or risk the OS being tuned around a rival's priorities.
- Handset makers shopping for alternatives to Android gain a concrete argument when pitching Ubuntu devices to carriers, since carrier buy-in — historically the binding constraint — now has a named US anchor.
Third-order effects
- If the CAG model works, OS development shifts further toward carrier co-design, echoing the openness push Verizon signaled back in its 2007 move — platforms increasingly shaped to operator requirements before a single unit ships.
- The pattern reinforces a market structure where no third platform survives on handset appeal alone: each needs at least one tier-one carrier as patron, making carrier advisory groups the de facto gatekeepers for new mobile OSes.
The trend: Carriers are hedging against the iOS-Android duopoly by embedding themselves in nascent operating systems at the advisory stage, turning OS launches into carrier partnerships before hardware exists.