In a surprising move yesterday, Verizon announced it had joined the Ubuntu Carrier Advisory Group. Presumably that means, it intends to sell Ubuntu phones and tablets in the US whenever they become available.
According to ZDNet, the membership does have its privileges, specifically having a say in the kinds of features the OS will have and being able to offer Ubuntu mobile devices before non-members.
Certainly cool in a way to get in the ground floor of an open source mobile OS and help shape it, but will such a device even fly in the US? It’s hard to say.
I imagine there are customers who are tired of giving their money over to large companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft and might be hungering for an alternative, and being open source makes it even more attractive. Of course, being from Verizon could be a negative, given recent revelations about Verizon sharing user metadata with the federal government under a FISA court order.
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