Ubuntu needs more apps, Android could be an alternative

May 20, 2015 09:14 GMT  ·  By

Ubuntu Touch is already stable, and it's available on two different phones right now, Bq Aquaris and Meizu MX4. It's different from your regular OS experience, but that's a good thing. The only real problem is the lack of apps, although a Blackberry approach to the problem might be a good thing for Canonical.

Every new mobile platform comes with the same major problem, the lack of native applications at launch. It takes a long time to get the ball rolling, which is actually harming the rate of adoption. When the same thing happened with iOS and Android, there was a different time, and many users were willing to wait, especially since they didn't have alternatives.

Potential Ubuntu users are less likely to wait for an application since they can get that functionality right away from another OS. This is the main reason you hear people complaining in the community about the lack of a Whatsapp app, but that's only a minor issue. The same will happen even if Whatsapp gets ported, and another one will get the focus. Luckily, there is a solution.

Android runtime on Ubuntu Touch

BlackBerry knew that it needed more apps, but instead of making things easy for devs to develop and port apps for their platforms, they did another thing entirely. They implemented an Android runtime on their phones (think more along the lines of Wine, but lighter and much faster), which allows them to run pretty much any Android app they want.

Canonical, on the other hand, invested time and money in tools that allow developers to make native apps and to port them from other platforms. It sounds like the better idea, but the apps (the important ones) are not arriving as fast as they should. What they need is a way to transparently emulate an Android OS and to run Android apps on it. Phones like Meizu MX4 should be more than capable of pulling this off.

So, what do you think? Would you care if you knew that an app on your Ubuntu system was actually an Android one?