In the early days of Ubuntu, it was always a challenge to promote an OS that was so new and little known to the market; we were often asked ‘Ubun what…?”! Over the years, Canonical has grown rapidly, has innovated even faster and the community has spread the word all across the globe. Today, with over 25 million users, Ubuntu is now a safe and perfect choice for customer, offering a stylish and intuitive interface that is fast, secure.

The growth of Ubuntu has also been driven through our strong partnership with major hardware OEM brands such as Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus and Acer. Not only is Ubuntu generally available pre-loaded from these leading OEMs, but in many regions we’ve entered into full retail partnership with dedicated stores.

Today, Dell and HP sell Ubuntu pre-installed at stores across India and China. Consumers can visit a designated store in major cities across these regions and find information, videos and experienced Ubuntu-savvy sales staff to thoughtfully guide customers through the buying experience. Dell offers computers for sale pre-loaded with Ubuntu in over a 1,000 stores across China, and HP is in the process of rapidly introducing 1,500 stores into the same region.

In Mexico, HP has been running in-store initiatives with Bodega Aurrera stores – a subsidiary of Wal Mart – where consumers could buy HP laptops with Ubuntu pre-loaded off the shelf. The computers are available in several hundred of the stores, and the initial units sold out at three times faster than anticipated. Proof that where Ubuntu device are available in stores, then customers will see strong value and purchase.

In USA-centric campaign with Asus, we ran a web-based sales campaign on Amazon.com. Asus netbooks pre-installed with Ubuntu were promoted on our website, guiding customers to the Amazon site. Asus PC’s pre-loaded pre-loaded with Ubuntu made it to Amazon.com’s top 100 sales for that month.

Dell’s ‘Ubuntu Test Zones’ are now open in Ukrainian shopping malls giving consumers the chance to experience Ubuntu via a life-sized 3D hologram promoter. The hologram promoter addresses shoppers so they can learn more about Dell computers with Ubuntu. In the campaign’s first two weeks, Dell reached over 280,000 consumers in the shopping malls.

These are just some of examples of the sales and marketing initiatives that we’re working on with our partners today. These partnerships are continuing to grow both in terms of volumes and regionally because of increasing demand from consumers and businesses for a viable alternative.