Canonical: Ubuntu To Soon Ship On 5% Of PCs

Chris Kenyon, the VP of sales and business development for Canonical, just spoke this afternoon at the Ubuntu 12.10 Developer Summit about what Canonical does with OEMs and ODMs. He also tossed out some rather interesting numbers about the adoption of Ubuntu Linux.

Here's some of the facts that Kenyon tossed out in his after-lunch keynote:

- Eight to ten million units shipped last year world-wide.

- Canonical will be opening their first Beijing office this year (their Taipei office right now handles most of their Asian operations since 2008).

- Last year Ubuntu shipped on 7.5 billion dollars (presumably USD) worth of hardware.

- Next year they expect to more than double these numbers to 18 million units world-wide, or what Chris says would be 5% of PCs shipping world-wide would be with Ubuntu Linux.

Side Note #1: last May at UDS Budapest is where Mark Shuttleworth tossed around wanting 200 million Ubuntu users in four years (2015), even with doubling in PC sales, they'll still need to push harder and get out Ubuntu on more CE devices like TVs and mobile phones if they still wish to hit this goal... Mark didn't comment on this 200 million user goal at UDS-Q yet -- there's notes from his earlier keynote -- or even at UDS-P back in Orlando from late last year.

Side Note #2: Kenyon didn't comment on what percentage of these Ubuntu-loaded PC sales still have users where they run Ubuntu, or namely the actual Ubuntu user count globally. The OEM/ODM count also obviously doesn't count those that install Ubuntu manually or obtain Ubuntu installations via other means. On the down side, when I talk with OEMs and others about Linux pre-loads, I commonly here a "significant percentage" of these Linux pre-loaded systems usually get wiped by their customers and replaced with pirated copies of Windows -- especially in the Asian markets, where customers are just going after the Linux PCs due to the lower sales cost.

- At more than 200 Dell stores in China, there is Ubuntu branding present and Dell China employees knowledgeable about Ubuntu Linux.

- Ubuntu continues to do very well in the server space.

- As far as when Ubuntu will be back at Best Buy here in the United States, or "When at Best Buy down the road?" Kenyon said, "We're working on it and I'm confident we're going to get there."