Canonical played down expectations that the version of its Ubuntu platform targeting mobile devices will pick-up top-tier vendor support this year, PC Pro reported.

The report cited Jono Bacon, community manager for the company, who said: “This is a long road though with many components, and I would be surprised if we see anything like this before 2015.”

Late last year, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, said that the company had signed the first deals which will see the platform launched in devices – although he also stopped short of naming names.

“We are now pretty much at the board level on four household brands. They sell a lot of phones all over the world, in emerging and fully emerged markets, to businesses and consumers,” he continued.

According to the latest report, while Ubuntu may make it onto devices this year, it is more likely from “smaller OEMs who serve a smaller region who see great opportunity in Ubuntu, and their costs and risk are smaller for them to trial a device”, Bacon said.

This is not the first high-profile setback for Canonical. Last year, the company launched an ambitious plan to “crowd-fund” a device called Ubuntu Edge, which fell well short of its funding target.