Nokia Sells off Qt, Ensures it is All in with Windows Phone 8

Following the recent demise of its shadowy Meltemi platform, Nokia has now more or less taken the final step towards removing all vestiges of earlier app and services development strategies by selling off its Qt platform. Qt came to Nokia through the $153 million acquisition of Trolltech back in early 2008, at a time when Nokia was pushing hard to bring not only Symbian (soon to join the Potters Field of operating systems, the open source community, along with its contemporary, WebOS), but other Linux-based operating systems (surely everyone remembers MeeGo) and devices into the market.

Does anyone remember Ovi – the platform that was supposed to become Nokia’s all-encompassing mobile digital media storefront? At that time in early 2008 – a period immediately following the launch of the iPhone, was the point in time when Nokia’s (and we’ll note as well Research in Motion’s) hubris about its products’ vast superiority over the iPhone and its ecosystem was at its highest. It was also a time when Symbian’s CEO, Nigel Clifford and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer were literally scoffing that Android was nothing more than a press release – there is a great YouTube video well worth watching for its comedic value on this below.

Ovi was going to dominate, and Nokia was looking for ways to ensure that developers would be able to easily create cross-platform applications that would work with both Symbian and MeeGo mobile devices (and possibly other devices that Nokia was working on at the time that might have evolved into straight forward Linux-based gadgets). The Trolltech folks had made a name for themselves with several developer toolsets, of which Qt was front and center as its signature platform for cross platform app and UI development - at the time of the acquisition Google Earth, Skype and browser vendor Opera were all prominent Trolltech Qt customers.

Ovi was to be the foundation of Nokia’s future as the dominant provider of Internet-based services, and Nokia needed developer tools to help it get there. From this emerged the $153 million acquisition of Trolltech. Trolltech’s team was ecstatic at the time about joining Nokia. Today, anyone left over from those early days must surely be feeling ecstatic again, albeit for finally becoming rid of Nokia this time around.

Digia Steps In

Digia, the software company acquiring Qt (the price is undisclosed but it is a very safe bet that it is but a fraction of what Nokia paid out in 2008), plans to enable Qt on Android, iOS and Windows 8 platforms. It will be interesting to see if, given today’s developer world and the overall advancement of mobile developer tools that have been made since 2008, Digia will gain any traction. Digia had earlier (back in March 2011) acquired the Qt Commercial licensing business from Nokia, and that business had apparently been successful under Digia’s guidance.

Qt has been used by over 450,000 developers and thousands of companies worldwide in over 70 industries to power mission-critical applications and UIs. Qt Commercial is well-used in a number key market segments that includes automotive, medical, advanced visualization and animation, industrial automation and aerospace and defense. Digia anticipates that Qt will have a key role bringing world-class user experience and user interfaces to embedded systems and consumer electronics.

Nokia and WP8 now a Lock

For Nokia getting rid of Qt puts one of the last of the final nails in the coffin of the old Nokia. Stephen Elop’s new Nokia is now clearly set to pursue an all-Windows Phone 8 trajectory – and this is a good thing for Nokia. It is good to see that Elop has managed to engineer the greatly needed turn around, and we hope it has now completely eliminated the collection of fiefdoms and old hubris that unfortunately was still very much a part of Nokia’s culture when Elop signed on.

All that remains at this point is for Nokia to truly impress us with some amazing hardware. The anticipated upcoming announcements at Nokia World must deliver some enormously impressive devices – and some enormously impressive new features. We’ll put in another plea from our end to see a WP8 super smartphone sporting some of Nokia’s still-amazing imaging technology - that would be the 43 megapixel camera Nokia demonstrated through its PureView 808 Symbian phone at Mobile World Congress back in February 2012. It is a very tall order to fill.

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