Growing app ecosystem for Ubuntu phones

It is an exciting time for Ubuntu on phones, with the ecosystem growing positively. We are delighted to announce new partnerships across key app categories from those that bring entertainment and productivity, to developer tools as well as partners helping bring your apps to Ubuntu.

Our partners will support Ubuntu on phones at launch to extend their reach to new users. Ubuntu brings a fluid and engaging smartphone experience for its users. Scopes, Ubuntu’s new UI paradigm, are at the heart of its truly content-centred interface. Ubuntu makes it really simple for app developers to provide first class experiences on the platform through a number of paths – from scopes, to HTML5 and Qt Quick apps.

Grooveshark is a web-based on-demand music streaming site and open platform for fans to discover new artists. Users can choose from a catalogue of over 22 million songs and save playlists (both can be embedded on other websites, blogs, and social media profiles via the Grooveshark Widget), and launch their own Internet radio station with a single click.

“Ubuntu is bringing true innovation to the market with content discoverability in the form of Ubuntu Scopes. The concept of easily accessible content for users aligns with what we believe in and how we enable openness of sharing music,” says Josh Bonnain, Vice President of Business Development at Grooveshark.

Grooveshark also allows artists and record labels to promote themselves through the application with rich site takeovers and advertising based on a slew of targeting and demographic data, ultimately getting their music straight into the ears of the music fans most likely to love it.

Learn more about Grooveshark

8Tracks provides the best music for any taste, time and place. Listeners select from more than one million playlists, each lovingly crafted through a unique, scalable curation model. DJs on the service make mixes for the joy of music and respect of listeners; listeners tune in for deeper, more relevant and less repetitious selections, along with the ‘soul’ and personality behind the music.

Over the last two years, monthly listeners have grown from one to eight million and monthly hours from three to 30 million. More than half of 8tracks’ audience is aged 18-24, a higher ratio than any other major digital music service.

“We’ve followed Ubuntu’s progress with great interest at 8tracks, as we feel the OS is a perfect fit with our democratic approach to internet radio and music discovery. We’re delighted to be launching our app on this engaging new mobile OS in order to bring our programming, whose strength is variety and depth of selection, to even more listeners around the globe,” says Jonathan Barnes, Director of Partnerships at 8tracks.

Learn more about 8tracks

Spinlet is the premier mobile music download platform bringing media distribution to emerging markets in Africa. Spinlet’s technology encourages the purchasing and discovery of new music while offering seamless integration and storage of the users’ music library on their mobile device.

“Music is an exciting key element to the Ubuntu offering, with the scopes innovation providing search capabilities from one central location – giving users plenty of choice and options. We are passionate about music, and believe it should be shared openly. Now with Ubuntu’s smart content discoverability, Spinlet can reach a diverse market, enabling African music to be heard globally,” says Bradley Shaw, Head of Business Development – Southern Africa.

Learn more about Spinlet

Euronews is the most-watched news channel in Europe and is a full multimedia platform for viewers on the move. Euronews covers world news and broadcasts globally in 13 different languages 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Since its launch in 1993, Euronews has been striving to supply factually-correct information in a non-superficial format, serving a global audience driven by a solid uncompromising journalism.

“We at Euronews are excited about Ubuntu coming to mobile devices. We plan to launch a Euronews multilingual scope to allow users to surface content from Europe’s leading news network with a simple search,” says Walid Chamak, Head of Digital Partnerships at Euronews.

Learn more about Euronews

VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVD, Audio CD, VCD, and various streaming protocols.

“Working together with Canonical on porting VLC to Ubuntu for phones has been very easy. The fact that the phone and desktop are so much alike means lots of saved development time making features simple to port,” says Jean-Baptiste Kempf, President of VideoLAN and lead VLC developer.

Learn more about VLC

LastPass is a leading password manager that saves and fills your logins for easier, safer browsing. It is fast, easy and simple; securely syncs your passwords across all your browsers and devices.

“The security on the Ubuntu OS is highly recognised, now with Ubuntu phones coming to market we are bringing LastPass to the platform to ensure users can access their critical passwords on the go,” says Joe Siegrist, CEO of LastPass.

Learn more about LastPass

Mapbox platform gives developers the power to make maps that embody their product and brand. Mapbox services are integrated on foursquare, Pinterest, and Evernote. With global, autoscaling infrastructure and cross-device compatibility, integrating maps into your apps is easy even if you have millions of users.

“Ubuntu for phones is a great platform for developers, with the combination of open source maps on an open platform its an obvious win for developers. Mapbox enables Ubuntu mobile developers to design totally custom maps and add them to their app in minutes,” says Eric Gundersen, CEO of Mapbox.

Learn more about Mapbox

AND Maps provides worldwide digital maps and location-based services. The company has been in the business for 30 years and focuses on adding location intelligence to improve business processes through the AND Location Based Services (LBS) Platform, proprietary digital maps and big geo data. AND brings its mapping and location services to Ubuntu with an easy to use mobile application providing detailed local information and high granular map data. In addition, AND will make its developer tools, web services and APIs available to Ubuntu’s application developer community to allow rich mapping experiences to be built into any mobile application.

“AND is very happy to work with Ubuntu in offering location technologies via the AND Location Based Services (LBS) Platform for the Ubuntu OS. This technology has powered the most important LBS companies as known today and will be available to all Ubuntu developers shortly,” says Hugo van der Linde CEO at AND. “For the Mobile World Congress we have created a map viewer with the proprietary AND navigation maps to start to show the capabilities of AND for the Ubuntu OS.”

Learn more about AND

ICS: ICS is the largest independent source of Qt expertise in North America, with a growing presence in Europe, ICS supports Qt developers with a wide spectrum of custom Qt services. ICS team of Qt software engineers continuously develop new solutions to the toughest and most complex issues faced by product-driven companies worldwide and can bring relevant solutions to your next Qt project.

“Ubuntu is the latest innovative mobile platform on Qt and we’re delighted to bring our Topics app to this engaging new platform,” says Mark Hatch, COO of ICS. “As the experts in mobile Qt development and UX design, ICS provides native app development services as well as localisation on Qt platforms. We are very excited to work with our partners to bring native content to this great new mobile OS.”

Learn more about ICS

Supporting quotes from our existing partners:

Apache Cordova & Adobe Phonegap: “Adobe and the PhoneGap team is thrilled to see Ubuntu support Apache Cordova. Working together, bringing web technology to the next generation of the Ubuntu operating system is a huge win for the open source community, developers, and the enterprise.” says Brian Leroux, VP of Apache Cordova and Principal Product Manager at Adobe Phonegap.

Learn more about Apache Cordova and how it supports Ubuntu platform

TWC: “Ubuntu’s mobile platform presents fresh opportunities for us to reach new audiences as our content and apps become available across all the most popular platforms. Ubuntu will prioritise weather forecasts through searches in the OS itself, ensuring that people get access to the information they need quickly,” says Mike Zarrilli, Vice President International Digital at The Weather Channel.

Learn more about The Weather Channel