Ubuntu Edge Missed Its Crowd Funding Goal; Will Have to Refund Pledges

[dgstorm]

The folks at Canonical have a bitter-sweet pill to swallow. Their Kickstarter crowd-funding goal for the cool new Ubuntu Edge smartphone missed its target by a long-shot. They will now have to issue a refund to all those who pledged money to their cause.

Despite that, they still raised more in a crowd-fund than any other company has before them. This means they have an exciting product, but that their initial goals were a bit lofty. They were shooting for a whopping $32 Million dollars, and although they missed it, they scored a total of $13 million, which is still phenomenal. Here's a quick quote with more of the details,

The campaign ended up raising just over $12.8 million, which is still the most money that any crowdsourced project has ever raised, beating the Pebble smartwatch by a couple million dollars. Of course, the price of the phone had a lot to do with the quick funds raised. Each backer had to kick in almost $700 if they wanted a Ubuntu Edge smartphone.

Because of that, the campaign skyrocketed to a crazy $3.4 million within 24 hours of the start, but contributions remained stagnant after that point, forcing Canonical to lower the cost of the phone in order to raise more money in a timely fashion.

Almost 20,000 people backed the campaign, which is pretty impressive. The company even noted that other businesses chipped in just to help out a promising project, including Bloomberg LP, which donated $80,000, as well as several smaller businesses chipping in a few grand here and there.

Perhaps this was simply an experiment to see how close they could come. It's probably an easy wager they will come back with a similar and more feasible project in the future. Sound off what you thought of the Ubuntu Edge phone, and whether it will be resurrected from the ashes like a Phoenix?

Source: SlashGear