Platform will be the "open alternative to Android."



From ArsTechnica:

Canonical has announced that the first Ubuntu-powered phones will ship later this year, with devices coming from two manufacturers: BQ in Spain and Meizu in China. According to Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth, both companies have a track record of breaking into new markets with mid-to-high-end phones. Shuttleworth said while Canonical was happy to work with "household names," the company initially wanted to find partners for whom Canonical can be a "significant part of their story."

Details of the phones that the companies would build were not on offer—though Canonical said that more information would be available at Mobile World Congress next week. But Shuttleworth pointed to the companies' existing products as an indication of what the future would hold. BQ has pushed the use of dual-SIM phones, while Meizu has followed a strategy of only having a single hardware model in the market at a time. The latter's current MX3 is reasonably high-end, with a Samsung Exynos Octo processor and a peculiar 1800×1080 screen resolution.

  Ubuntu phones to ship this year from two manufacturers