Canonical revamped (again) the funding for an Ubuntu Edge smartphone as part of its Indiegogo crowd funding programme, as it looked increasingly likely the company will miss its $32 million target.

The company fixed the price of a device at $695, having previously adopted a “sliding scale” based on the number of devices sold which topped-out at $830 – and which itself was a change from pricing which originally jumped from $600 to $830 after the first day of sale.

In a campaign update, the company said it had been “negotiating with several major component suppliers who are keen to see the Edge reach its goal”, and that “as a result of these negotiations, we can now produce the same state-of-the-art device for less than we originally estimated”.

Canonical also said that Bloomberg had signed up as an $80,000 enterprise partner, which will see it provided with 100 devices and technical support.

But while the Indiegogo campaign has raised an impressive $9.7 million (as of 12 August), including more than $2 million in its first eight hours, it is still some way from reaching its $32 million target.

Indeed, the campaign raised $9.7 million in 21 days, and would need to raise an additional $22 million in the last 10 days to reach its goal. With the initial momentum of the campaign having already been lost, it is unclear what can be done to give it a boost into the final furlong (although a slight uptick would not be surprising).

Due to the structure of the programme, Ubuntu will only receive its funds if it reaches the $32 million target.

While the programme has undoubtedly bought Canonical a lot of good PR for Ubuntu in the smartphone space, the value of this will be significantly impaired if and/or when the campaign fails – however ambitious the target is, not meeting it is not a great way to prove demand.

Indeed, with Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, telling CNet that the effort is “ancillary to the broader mission of bringing Ubuntu to the market”, it is not immediately clear what the benefit of the Indiegogo effort is – other than to expose the company to negative coverage at a critical stage of the gestation of Ubuntu for smartphones.

While there may be a dedicated group of enthusiasts prepared to back the platform, beyond this convincing customers to pay for a premium, unsubsidised smartphone, using an operating system that is unproven in the mobile space, which will not be delivered until next year, is a tough sell.

In recent weeks, Canonical has done an impressive job of generating operator support for its platform, although it is short of backers on the hardware front.