Ubuntu-driven smartphones will be available to customers in October 2013 according to the Wall Street Journal, which cites Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth from a presentation given in New York on Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal reports Shuttleworth as saying that the new phone operating system would be available in "two large geographical markets in October", but he wouldn't say where those markets were and declined to identify carrier or handset partners.

The article, which incorrectly refers to Shuttleworth as CEO of Canonical – he stepped down from the CEO position in December 2009 – gives a timetable for the release of the phone that is much more advanced than the one Shuttleworth gave at the launch of Ubuntu phone on 2 January this year, when he placed a shipping Ubuntu phone in the 2014 timescale.

At that January event though, Shuttleworth did refer to devices shipping in the last quarter of 2013, encompassing the October date, but this was a reference to Ubuntu for Android, the extension to Android that was announced in February 2012 and which gives Android phones a Unity desktop when docked with a screen, mouse and keyboard. No devices have yet shipped with Ubuntu for Android. The docked-mode desktop is also a feature of Ubuntu for Phones; in both cases it requires a quad core processor to drive the desktop mode.

We have reached out to Canonical for clarification of the company's position.

(djwm)