Mark Shuttleworth Promises One OS to Rule the Mobile Market

Mark Shuttleworth, billionaire entrepreneur and one-time space tourist, has spent the last six weeks on the road. He’s been zooming about on his private jet, trying to sell hardware makers, telecommunications companies, and developers on the idea that there’s room for yet another mobile operating system. Shuttleworth wants to see Ubuntu, the popular version of Linux that he developed, running on smartphones, tablets, and any other kind of device people think up.

Shuttleworth is not oblivious to just how crowded the mobile software market has become. Microsoft and Blackberry are spending billions of dollars to fight over the scraps left behind by Apple and Google. He does, however, think the market is chaotic enough to give a real disrupter a chance. And so Canonical, Shuttleworth’s company behind Ubuntu, has presented the idea of running the exact same operating system on phones, tablets, TVs, PCs, and servers. This means that developers could write to one platform and have their apps run on all devices, and that things like security protocols can be consistent, from the smartphone to the data center. Says Shuttleworth: “The question is: Can we emerge as having the cleanest, most converged story?”