Update July 20th: The Countdown no longer shows on the website.

A minimal countdown has appeared on the official Ubuntu homepage – but what is it counting down to?

The teaser, which seems to have only been added today (July 18th), shows a dark background with four trailing slashes and ‘4 days’ appearing above text reading ‘the line where two surfaces meet’.

Speculation

Canonical are no stranger to teasing imminent announcements using the front page of their website. Both the January reveal of Ubuntu Touch for mobile, and the subsequent news of a tablet-orientated edition, were both trailed in similar ways.

Is this teaser counting down to an announcement related to those? Or is it something new?

Ubuntu Edge

What’s interesting is that Canonical recently filed for (and secured) a recent trademark for the name ‘Ubuntu Edge’.

‘…a website titled ‘ubuntuedge.com’ was registered earlier in the week.’

According to the trademark, viewable to the public on the US Trademark website, ‘Ubuntu Edge’ is related to software, computers and, perhaps most tellingly, ‘mobile telecommunications’.

Further more, detective work by FOSS-fan Alan Bell shows that a website titled ‘ubuntuedge.com’ was registered by Canonical earlier in the week.

Looking at the website promo itself we see numerous lines slashes and angles. Is this a direct nod to the trademark?

Smart Watch?

Maybe we should focus more on the words on show. ‘two’, ‘surfaces’ and ‘meet’.

Do these hint at an Ubuntu Smart watch? Apple, Android and even Firefox OS are all betting on smart watches. Maybe the ‘two surfaces’ mentioned in the trail are the skin of ones wrist and the casing of the device…

Or maybe we should be thinking inside the phone box; y’know, the more obvious candidates of phone and tablet. Maybe Canonical’s efforts to woo hardware manufacturers has paid off?

Whatever it turns out to be the good news is that we don’t have long to wait based on the counter – just 4 days..