Originally posted by ElectricPrism
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The USA is an established market and people already have their preferences. It's a difficult market to get into. When the Ubuntu for Phones project was announced, I immediately hoped they would be supported by a Chinese manufacturer that was not established in the USA, but was self-sufficient in China. So I originally hoped for Huawei. But Meizu has turned out to be even better. To them, Ubuntu isn't primarily about selling phones. That's what Android is for. It's about using the Ubuntu community to promote Meizu as a brand by giving it access to good hardware. So Ubuntu users, whether they're using Ubuntu on phones or not, are busy promoting Meizu and this is leaking into the USA as well. The same is true for Bq as well, of course, but they're using a different approach and targeting a different market. But I don't think I would've known too much about Meizu or Bq without Ubuntu. Would you?
It's not an elementary fail, as you put it. It's a good strategy. We get free hardware and they get free marketing. What's puzzling to me, is that there's so few parties. If I were trying to sell phones, I would support all the OSes I possibly could, knowing that those who love those systems would also love me and do so loudly. Surely that marketing must be worth the effort to port the phone.
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