Ubuntu is on an exciting journey, a journey of convergence. Our goal is to build a convergent Operating System that brings a uniformity of technology and experience across phones, tablets, desktops, and televisions, and smoothing the lines between those devices in terms of interoperability and access to content. It is a bold vision, but Ubuntu has a strong reputation both in terms of our heritage in the desktop, server, and cloud, and with our passionate and capable community. I just wanted to provide some updates on work that is going on in delivering this vision.

There has been significant work going on in building Ubuntu Touch (the overall name for this convergent platform). The team have marked October in their calendars as the goal to have most of the primary components in the Ubuntu Touch code-base complete so we can deliver a fully converged system in Ubuntu 14.04. The Unity team have been working to centralize the different form factors into Unity Next, which you can [play with now](https://unity.ubuntu.com/projects/unity/) (weekly updates on progress coming soon [here](https://lists.launchpad.net/ubuntu-phone/)), the [Mir](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mir) team are making good progress in getting Mir ready for deployment on handsets with a technical preview on the desktop in 13.10 (see the [weekly updates](https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/mir-devel/)), and the [Ubuntu SDK](https://developer.ubuntu.com/get-started/gomobile/) team are working towards delivering a beta in the next few months. We have also been working with our community to build the 11 [core apps](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/CoreApps) (of which three them are already shipping in the [Ubuntu Touch daily development image](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Install)), the Ubuntu Touch code-base has been [ported by our community](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Porting) to and working on [40 handsets, with 25 handsets in progress, and across 19 different brands](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices) (of which the 4800+ posts in the [XDA Ubuntu Touch forum](https://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2068) has helped drive this work), and our app developer community has already grown to 1650 members [on Google+](https://plus.google.com/communities/111350780270925540549) with a huge variety of apps in development, many of which we are pulling together in [a PPA](https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-touch-coreapps-drivers/+archive/collection). We have also been working to [automate the app submission process](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AppDevUploadProcess) with a series of AppArmour sand-boxing improvements and tooling changes, we have an [eight part tutorial series](https://mhall119.com/2013/04/building-an-ubuntu-sdk-app-rev-1/) for writing an app from scratch, and have multiple training events and an Ubuntu App Showdown contest planned. On the business side we have seen tremendous interest from handset manufacturers and carriers, and the business team are in a marathon set of meetings across the world moving the discussions forward.

There is a lot to do, but we have an awesome team and community committed to the opportunity that lays before us. If we stay focused, stay on the ball, and take an organized and pro-active approach to problem solving, we could bring real technological change to the world with Ubuntu delivered via the very devices that form the fabric of most people’s lives. Let’s do it.