Ubuntu smartphone coming in the first quarter, despite crowd-funding failure

But the phone won't be the fancy, high-end device promised on Indiegogo

Canonical will produce its Ubuntu Edge smartphone for launch in early 2014, despite failing this week to achieve the $32m funding it sought on crowd-funding website Indiegogo.

According to CEO Jane Silber, the company will push ahead with the converged device, which will be able to run both Android and Ubuntu Linux, and to be used as a smartphone on the move and a PC in the office.

However, she warned, the "full Ubuntu convergence experience" would not appear in the first wave of Ubuntu devices that will appear in the first quarter.

Silber also suggested that it was the strong interest from contract manufacturers in producing the phone that enabled the company to lower the price midway through the Indiegogo campaign - not a price-cutting gimmick on the part of Canonical.

Earlier, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth told the BBC that the company had made a mistake in trying to crowdfund in order to cover both the development and the manufacturing costs. In future, he told the BBC, the company would "try to find a different source for the development costs and have that secured" before launching a crowdfunding campaign to manufacture the handsets.

The Ubuntu Edge was intended as a high-end smartphone - with a price to match - initially built on a zero-profit basis. In addition to dual-booting both Android and Ubuntu, it would offer 4GB of memory, 128GB of flash storage, and a 4.5-inch screen with a resolution of 720 by 1,280 pixels protected by sapphire glass, which ought to be completely scratch-proof.