Hello Linux Geeksters. As you may know, Canonical is organizing yet another Ubuntu App Showdown (the third one, so far), which takes place right now, in order to promote more applications written in QML, JavaScript/C++ or HTML5, compatible with the Ubuntu SDK, to run on Unity 8.
Jono Bacon’s hopes that this app contest will bring an the following kind of apps to Ubuntu Touch: an Email Client with support for both IMAP and Gmail accounts, a social media client that works fine with Facebook and Twitter, a Google+ Client, an Ubuntu LoCo Teams App that will enable the users to view content from loco.ubuntu.com and a riff recoder, an app for adjusting the microphone volume.
For those who don’t know, Canonical has been working a lot at Ubuntu Touch, the mobile version of Ubuntu. While the initial plan was to make it available for all the Google Nexus smartphones and tablets, the developers have dropped the support for Galaxy Nexus, Google Nexus 7 2012 and Google Nexus 10, Ubuntu Touch being officially available only for the Google Nexus 4 smartphone and the Google Nexus 7 2013 tablet. Also, Canonical has recently announced that Meizu and BQ will be the first two Ubuntu Touch phone manufacturers.
While there aren’t a lot of applications for Ubuntu Touch yet available, Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth hopes that by the time the first Ubuntu Touch powered phones hit the market, the top 50 Android/iOS apps will be available for Ubuntu Touch. Ubuntu Touch uses Unity 8 as the default desktop environment, which recently got new Unity Scopes and a Scopes Store, a feature that is not yet available on Ubuntu 14.04 for desktop.
Also worth mentioning, Mark’s Shuttleworth big dream is to reach full desktop-mobile convergence somewhere between the releases of Ubuntu 14.10 and Ubuntu 15.04 (between October 2014 and April 2015).