Ubuntu for Android to Star at Mobile World Congress

According to Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical is moving quickly ahead with its plans to bring Ubuntu to platforms going well beyond just desktop computers. In his latest blog post, Shuttleworth notes: "We’ll show Ubuntu neatly integrated into Android at Mobile World Congress next week. Carry just the phone, and connect it to any monitor to get a full Ubuntu desktop with all the native apps you want, running on the same device at the same time as Android. Magic. Everything important is shared across the desktop and the phone in real time."

You can watch a video of Ubuntu for Android in action here, and this latest move falls in line with Canonical's increasing efforts to find new platforms for Ubuntu.

Shuttleworth makes a few clarifications in his post:

"This isn’t the 'Ubuntu Phone.' The phone experience here is pure Android. This announcement is playing to a different story, which is the convergence of multiple different form factors into one most-personal device. Naturally, the most personal device is the phone, so we want to get all of these different personalities – phone, tablet and desktop – into the phone. When you need a desktop, you connect up to a screen and a keyboard. When you need a tablet, you dock to some very elegant glass."

The really big news for some, though, is that Canonical has wrapped Ubuntu TV into Ubuntu for Android. At the CES show in Las Vegas earlier this year, Canonical showed off Ubuntu TV, as we reported here. It's a new interface that integrates television and movie content on an open source platform that Canonical hopes will win developers over, and it's clearly meant to have a future on smartphones.

We'll follow up with more on Ubuntu for Android as Mobile World Congress kicks off in Barcelona next week. The conference should be loaded with mobile technology announcements. 

Image Courtesy of Canonical.