Meizu And BQ To Roll Out Ubuntu Smartphones

It does seem as though the first of Ubuntu-powered smartphones will be introduced sometime later this year, where the manufacturer would be European designer BQ as well as Chinese phone manufacturer Meizu, where the latter has had some pretty interesting releases in the past. According to Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth, extra details will be revealed at the upcoming Mobile World Congress that is happening in Barcelona, Spain, later this month, although there were hints that Meizu’s handset will be more or less the already released Meizu MX3, albeit it will ditch the Android platform and run on Ubuntu instead.

Why BQ and Meizu in the first place? Well, they were selected due to their expertise when it comes to making some headway in select markets. BQ has already picked up a reputation when it comes to designing high-end devices in Europe, while Meizu has already made a mark for itself in the China-based market, with plans to make it big globally as well. Ubuntu for phones was introduced slightly more than a year ago, and public beta builds for installation on Google Nexus phones and tablets have also rolled out since then, but it has been virtually impossible to purchase a handset that had Ubuntu software preloaded. Something tells me that all of that is going to change pretty soon.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Meizu, ubuntu