It’s looking more and more like the world may never see the awesome prowess of the Ubuntu Edge come to market, as Canonical’s concept “Superphone” has only two weeks left to hit its $32 million Indiegogo funding target, and it’s not even halfway towards reaching that goal.

Canonical may have over-reached and asked for too much from the crowdfunding community, given that the current record on Indiegogo belongs to Scanadu, which posted a funding goal of $100,000 but was able to raise $1,664,176.  Canonical may have had a better chance had it launched the project on Kickstarter, arguably a more famous crowdfunding community that’s definitely been more generous – its record holder of course is the soon-to-be-famous Pebble smartwatch, which was able to raise $10,266,845 despite starting out with only a $100,000 funding goal.

To date, the Ubuntu Edge has raised an impressive $8,520,645, which of course smashes all previous pledges on Indiegogo. But even so, it still needs to raise another $23,479,355 million in the remaining 14 days it has left, which means that from here on out, Canonical needs to score to the tune of $1.7 million a day.

When the Ubuntu Edge first launched on Indiegogo, things looked very promising.  In just 24 hours, it was able to raise a massive $3.45 million, and by the end of the week, it had hit $7.07 million.  Unfortunately, the hype quickly died down, and by the end of the second week, funding slowed to a crawl, inching to just over $8 million

Given the way things have slowed down, it doesn’t look good for Canonical. Last week, Jason Waddell and Willem Ligtenberg of the statistical consulting company Open Analytics predicted that Canonical would not be able to reach its goal in time, saying that at best, they’d manage to hit somewhere between $18m and $22m by the time the deadline expires.

What this all means is that, if as expected, Canonical doesn’t hit its target, there will be no Ubuntu Edge superphone:

“If we don’t reach our target there won’t be an Ubuntu Edge. We greatly appreciate every bit of support we receive during the 30 days. The funding target takes into account the large cost of manufacturing a high-end smartphone,” stated Canonical previously.

But is it really all over yet? Well, it looks that way but Ubuntu fans don’t need to despair just yet. Joey-Elijah Sneddon, editor of OMG! Ubuntu!, believes that Canonical can still pull this off, as there is no statistical evidence regarding a crowdfunding goal on this scale to say that they won’t. In fact, as previous crowdfunding campaigns have showed us, these campaigns very often get a kick up the behind with a flurry of late investors who’d previously been sitting on the fence – only today, Ubuntu Edge finally received its first enterprise backer in the shape of Bloomberg, which pledged $10,000.

With news of Ubuntu Edge’s funding woes hitting the headlines now, this may just spark the interest of more investors who’re willing to back this project. And of course, don’t forget that Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth himself is a very, very rich man, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that if they get a bit closer to the target, he could end up chipping in a little of his own personal fortune.

The Fat Lady hasn’t sung yet ;)