Nokia confirms Qt as app platform for "next billion"

My take is that Nokia bought Trolltech because they realised they needed to drastically upgrade their software chops. Unfortunately while Qt is great stuff, turning it from a GUI toolkit into a top-to-bottom platform is taking more time than Nokia can afford. Hence the MS deal which is just intended to buy them, time.

Apple has proved that device manufacturers need to have solid software capabilities in-house in order to be able to compete. Licensing an OS is a ticket to the bottom of the value chain.

If Nokia has really learned this lesson, then they should recognise that Qt is their only long-term hope of becoming a top-tier player again. Frankly, they're doing exactly what I would be doing in their situation (except I'd have preferred to go with Android and a Qt compatibility layer as a stopgap, but large tranches of MS cash might have turned my head towards WP7 as well).

So they are keeping Qt development for their low end phones? Shouldn't they have made this announcement a few months ago?

Some of the comments on the page seem to hint at Qt being on S40, but the article never mentions that. S40 phones can currently only run J2ME apps. I doubt S40 would ever get QT. Even if new S40 phones got Qt you then have a market split with old S40 and new S40..

The 100 million devices are S60/Symbian based devices that are slowly being replaced by iPhone, Android, and WP7.

I have an S60 phone. I had an S40 phone before. I bought them unlocked/unbranded from Nokia's flagship store in NYC. I did J2ME on the S40 and Symbian development in C++ on the S60. I was a hardcore Nokia fan. The platform is outdated though... and my next phone will most likely be a new Samsung Galaxy based Android phone.

Hmm.... I wonder what the political situation is inside Nokia, are the Trolls fighting hard for position or is it coming to them?

I'm really confused. next billion what?

I swear i understand the words i read on the internet less and less these days.

I really wonder why Nokia didn't give the N9 a chance in the market before switching focus to Windows Phone 7. It seems that with good marketing and developer support, it could at least have had a chance. Now, seems like few people would buy an N9 over an iPhone, Android, or WP7 from another manufacturer...

What a fluff. No real content here. No new platforms for Qt announced, nothing. I find nothing that would reassure me that Qt "will live on in the future with Nokia". All I see is Symbian, which certainly will not "live on in the future", and MeeGo which seems to be in eternal limbo.

Sorry Nokia but that's not good enough. You need to publish a road map giving specific products and release dates for me to give any further thought to Qt. This "confirmation" is lacking in details to the point of being disconcerting.