i found this on ars technica
Canonical has formed a "Carrier Advisory Group" of eight mobile operators who will collaborate to influence the development of Ubuntu for smartphones.
Says it all … the carriers will want to twist it till it’s unrecognisable, brand it to death, and tie it exclusively to their service … or they won’t be interested.
They won’t give up the power they wield by having total control … that’s why Android is so big, it gives the carriers a free hand to do what they wish … the downside = fragmentation, and tie in.
it will either stay niche, or relinquish control then become as fragmented as Android.
I hope it’s the “stay niche” … but something tells me Canonical aren’t aiming for niche 
i can’t see the day when EE have ubuntu ,firefox and tizen phones alongside android , wp8 or apple
sad but that’s me being geek
I saw a video Jono Bacon had put up on youtube demoing the phone software running on a Samsung Galaxy.
It looked pretty well done. Still some areas where there was little more than placeholders for yet to be polished content. But overall it looked pretty slick.
It’s iOS-ish, but so what? Apple don’t own slickness in UI’s.
As to whether it will ever be offered in High Street shops remains to be seen. If it syncs with any OS, then it would be great. I suspect it will be tied to Ubuntu, Windows and maybe OSX and if they push Ubuntu hard then trying to sell a phone, for which it is suggested you replace your OS and learn a new set of non-intuitive GUI skills, it is going to be the fail of the century.
Maybe there’s enough Ubuntu users to make it viable.
Personally I’m waiting for a slackware phone. I suspect I may have to wait a long time.
How about a Gentoo phone … where you just get a bag of components, and have to figure out how to build it yourself from a cryptic manual that you need a phone to access 
Or a Peppermint phone … goes all sticky in the rain, and all your pocket lint gets stuck to it, but it tastes great.
A Mint phone … really a rebadged Ubuntu phone that only installs “some” updates, as it thinks certain core updates are “dangerous”
A Redhat phone … Free, but only if you pay them to recharge the battery.
or a Windows phone … comes with a “rectangular spectrum” interface (aka. “rectum”) and the built in GPS keeps doing U-turns … Oh wait…
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Or the Arch phone - very fast, so fast it almost turns on before you know you need it. Updated more than once a day, some updates can leave the phone deprived of all functionality and the parent Company will not take kindly to you moaning about a broken phone - their philosophy being, if you own a phone and don’t understand every component, how it works and how to control it in the face of problems, then you are an idiot and shouldn’t own a phone in the first place.
I think I’ll stick to the slackphone (power it up and it takes you, eventually, to a blackscreen with a blinking cursor, whereupon you need to know which system files to edit and how, in order to get a GUI and dialer to appear.) The fact that by the time my phone has started up, you have started yours up, made the call and hung up again is besides the point, for surely, yea and verily Slackware is correct and the great god Unix shall be well pleased with me and wroth with you.
Debian phone - Stable as hell, but has a strict policy on who you can and can’t call, requires you jump through hoops and add an extra piece of kit to be able to call people who aren’t on the “accepted” call list.
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