The reason is they make little to no revenue from desktop, and no profit. As a cost center they subsidize it to bolster their server and hopefully mobile offeri

The reason is they make little to no revenue from desktop, and no profit. As a cost center they subsidize it to bolster their server and hopefully mobile offerings by a network effect - people using Ubuntu server may want to develop on Ubuntu desktop and vice versa. [1] It would be a loss if Canonical drops support for desktop as in my experience Ubuntu desktop is the easiest and most practical desktop Linux available. I like that Shuttleworth is committed to it but hope that that lasts.