Ubuntu is on course to ship on 5% of the worlds PCs next year, Canonical’s Chris Kenyon has revealed.

Kenyon, who helps lead sales and business development at Canonical, announced the gains during a plenary discussion at the Ubuntu Developer Summit on the company’s work with OEMs and ODMs.

Between 8 and 10 million Ubuntu units shipped ‘last year’, equating to around $7.5 billion dollars worth of hardware sales. That figure, Kenyon expects, will double to 18 million ‘next year’ which, he says, relates to some 5% of the world-wide PC market.

‘200 Million Users’

The last year or so has seen the Vodafone ‘Webbook’ go on sale in South Africa, Dell China taking Ubuntu to the masses, and ASUS equip a handful of new EeePC models with Ubuntu options.

“We sell millions of PCs with HP, Lenovo, Dell, Asus, Acer,” Mark Shuttleworth recently told Bussiness Insider website. “We expect to ship close to 20 million PCs in the next year.’

Kenyon’s 5% quote is a healthy projection – but is it enough to help Ubuntu reach its goal of ‘200 million users’ by 2014/15? Mathematically not, but note the wording; ‘Ubuntu users‘ applies to more than those using traditional PCs.

With Ubuntu TVs, phones and tablets in the works the potential reach to new users grows ever wider, making that 200 million aim not quite so ‘pie in the sky’ as many assumed it to be.