A lot can happen in 24 hours.

National sporting teams can go from also-rans to gold medal winners; teen idols can nark off their entire fanbase; and optimistic crowd-sourced ideas can get flat-out rejected.

That’s what’s happened to an optimistic punt at persuading Chinese smartphone vendor ZTE to make an Ubuntu phone.

Though we didn’t link to the original idea directly in our original article yesterday — we didn’t want to be seen to gerrymander the result — the person who filed it has since been in touch to say that ZTE has rejected it.

Why? Well, that they’re not really saying.

Shortly after this article was published ZTE reinstated the original proposal.

Similar Idea Appears

A similar idea, one musing on the possibility of ZTE’s crowd-sourced device supporting multiple operating systems, has since appeared.

But before you get too excited you’ll want to read this excerpt (paraphrased and edited) from a ZTE employee in response to the new proposal:

“ZTE has built phones for many operating systems in the past. But users cast their votes with their wallets, and when they don’t buy the phones, it doesn’t make sense to continue support for the OS. Some of the operating systems can’t get enough traction with developers to build apps, and people want to buy phones that have their favorite apps.”

Yowch!

Still, said employee did say he couldn’t rule the submission out (unlike the previous one, which they did). It’s since been moved into the section where you, the great and the good, can vote on it.

…But he did put the boot in:

“I fear that this is one that we already have the answer to. When users are casting real votes, by spending money, we just haven’t seen the traction for any operating system that does not have access to the app ecosystem from Android (I’m ruling out iOS since it’s closed to Apple).”

With word from Bq saying they do not have plans for further Ubuntu phones, are darkened clouds starting to gather over the Ubuntu Phone project?

That remains to be seen…