The UBports Foundation wants to attract 50 additional full-time developers and €1 million in funding to optimize alternative independent mobile operating system Ubuntu Touch.

Amsterdam, July 13, 2021 – The UBports community offers users of mobile devices an independent mobile operating system as an alternative to Android and iOS, with the Linux-based mobile operating system Ubuntu Touch. In order to quickly optimize Ubuntu Touch, which is being developed by the international UBports community, and to broaden the range of available options, the UBports Foundation wants to attract 50 extra full-time developers and €1 million in funding this year. Confidence in the quality of the operating system has led to Ubuntu Touch being offered pre-installed on Volla smartphones, among others.

Freedom of choice mobile operating system

The UBports community which has been responsible for the further development of the Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system since 2017 has grown considerably in recent years. The UBports community believes it is important that there is freedom of choice for smartphone users who would like to have an alternative operating system and further steps are needed to accomplish this. Community efforts have already resulted in Ubuntu Touch currently supporting various models of smartphones and tablets. These are officially supported by the UBports core team. The aim in the coming period is to further expand the number of devices that Ubuntu Touch offers pre-installed.

Substantial number of global users in 2026

The growing interest in an alternative mobile operating system is evidenced by the fact that the UBports website attracts between 30,000 and 60,000 visitors monthly and that the 13 forums receive 1.2 million views per month. Good news is that an average of 40-70 developers per year participate in the further development and that 5-10 volunteers sign up every month to contribute to the project.

Jeroen Baten, operational marketing manager of the UBports Foundation stated : “Our community believes that everyone is free to use, study, share and improve any open source software created by the community without restrictions. Our aim is to attract even more developers in the coming months, so that Ubuntu Touch can be further optimized and offered pre-installed on more smartphones. We are looking for co-operation partners for this and we aim to have 10,000 non-technical end users by the end of this year. We aim to have a substantial number of Ubuntu Touch users worldwide by 2026. In addition to additional developers, funding partners are also needed to achieve this objective. “

Direct and indirect partners

The mobile phone market is huge and the niche market in which UBports operates can therefore quickly become substantial. This is interesting for both direct and indirect funding partners who want to contribute to the further development of Ubuntu Touch. Indirect partners can make donations to the UBports Foundation, which helps collaborating partners to further develop their products. Partners who contribute in a direct way can do so by hiring developers to enhance specific features. Of course there are also opportunities for private individuals to contribute to the development.

Ambitions for 2021 and beyond

In order to meet the aforementioned objectives, the UBPorts community wants to have optimized the following aspects and functionalities by the end of 2021:

• Support of the modern GSM/VoLTE protocol;

• An application through which all Android applications can also be run seamlessly on Ubuntu Touch;

• An update of the underlying operating system: The newer Ubuntu 20.04 version brings many advantages in hardware and software support;

• Adoption and integration of the graphical desktop environment Lomiri;

• A newer version of the open-source widget toolkit Qt;

• Optimization of all core apps.

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Note for editors:

More information can be found on the website of the UBports Foundation. For questions regarding this message, please contact:

Jeroen Baten, Operational Marketing Manager for the UBports Foundation

jeroen@ubports.com

About the UBPorts Foundation

The UBports Foundation supports a widespread and collaborative community for the development and promotion of the Ubuntu Touch open source operating system with a focus on the mobile segment. The core values of this operating system are freedom of choice, privacy, protection and security. UBports believes that if this common platform can be placed at the center of the mobile computing industry, it will bring about a change that fundamentally leads to more freedom of choice for people.