In the first of a series of launches, Meizu has announced that the Ubuntu MX4, which will be sold across Europe soon, is immediately available to developers in China. The move kicks off Meizu’s push towards strengthening the Ubuntu ecosystem in China, ahead of launching the Chinese Edition to its user base later this year.

Meizu is one of the most popular high-end smartphone brands in China, recognized for its innovative and elegant product design and for pioneering the user centric distribution model that has become the standard for several Chinese manufacturers.

The Ubuntu MX4 launch also coincides with the final months of the China Mobile Ubuntu Developer Contest, which is already seeing thousands of developers participating in onsite and online training as well as hackathons at various universities across China.

With the introduction of Scopes – a way to integrate the content and services typically hidden behind apps directly into the OS – developing mobile experiences on Ubuntu can be done at a fraction of the cost of developing traditional apps, while at the same time delivering a much more discoverable and engaging experience to users.

A number of Chinese scopes are already available from the Ubuntu store including Baidu, Dianping, Weibo, Youku, Sohu and Chinese versions of the Today, Nearby and News aggregation scopes. Web apps are also available for Tmall, Taobao and QQ among others, and Sogou is working on bringing their popular Chinese input method to Ubuntu phones.

As of this latest release, developers will also be able to submit their own scopes as sources to the aggregation scopes installed by default on the device by a simple tagging mechanism when submitting to the Ubuntu Store. The store itself has been revamped, now counting over 1300 scopes and apps within just a few months from the first device coming to market.

For developers who have existing HTML5 apps running on Android and iOS – it’s a breeze to bring those to Ubuntu – see here.

The device is set to go on sale today, directly from Meizu’s website.