According to a recent message posted on the Ubuntu Devel mailing list by Colin Watson, Installer Team leader, Ubuntu might get a new, simplified packaging format and app installer which should make it easier for developers to get their software into Ubuntu. This will target, at least initially, the Ubuntu phone/tablet but it should be usable elsewhere too, even on non-Ubuntu or non-Linux systems.
The already existing packages won’t change and Ubuntu will continue to use dpkg and apt, syncing with Debian and so on.
The new packaging format is aimed at making it easier to build packages for Ubuntu: no dependencies between applications, no maintainer scripts and each app will be installed in its own directory.