Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu platform, told Mobile World Live that it is “in a good starting position” with developers as it looks to build its presence in the mobile space.

The executive said: “We’re pretty confident that we’ll have a portfolio of the top 50 applications that are native, that are optimised, that give people a really fantastic experience at launch, and so that’s very important.”

In our exclusive video interview, Shuttleworth noted that the company has a “unique relationship with the Android developer community,” and that it will be easier to port apps from Android to Ubuntu than for other device platforms.

And he said that the organisation is “very confident also that we’ll do a first-class job of the web”.

Targeting handsets, Ubuntu for phones was unveiled in January 2013, which was joined a month later by a tablet version.

The intention is to use the same operating system across mobile devices and PCs, which differs from the strategies of Canonical’s platform rivals.

Our full interview is here.