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Nokia ports Qt developer toolkit to N900, Symbian to come

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 12 October, 2009

READ MORE: Nokia | Application Environment | Linux | Qt | Symbian

The past month has seen Nokia pushing its Qt cross-platform development toolkit to the center of its software strategy, and this week it promises two "monumental" announcements in advance of the Qt Developer Days conference in Munich next week.

The first is the announcement that developers can now use Qt to build and port applications across both Nokia operating systems - Maemo Linux and Symbian - as well as Windows Mobile. Qt was created mainly for Linux systems by Trolltech, acquired last year by Nokia, and then ported to Symbian. It forms the heart of Nokia's strategy to get its software and web services beyond its own devices and Symbian OS, into a broader position that sits above specific platforms. Hence the support for the old enemy Microsoft, which brings in the huge Windows developer base and improves Nokia's position in an OS that is still important in two of the Finn's weak spots, the enterprise and the US. Of course, the thorny strategic question that must be exercising many people within Nokia must be whether to extend support to Android.

For now, developers will soon be able to use Qt for the three chosen platforms, and Nokia is particularly keen to get them interested in the new N900 mobile internet device, set to ship soon. This runs the latest update of Maemo, release 5, for which Qt has now been officially made available. Apps can also be ported to the upcoming Maemo 6 release. Final release of Qt 4.6, which will work with Maemo 5, will be in the first quarter of 2010, with the Symbian release not far behind.

"With this announcement and our upcoming port of Qt to the Symbian platform, we will quickly see Qt established as a leading framework for mobile application development. Developers will be able to use Qt as a framework to create powerful native applications and with Qt's WebKit integration, it also provides them with a platform for creating web applications and services," said Sebastian Nystrom, VP of application services and frameworks at Nokia.

The extension of the toolkit will also incorporate the community driven 'Qt for Maemo' project, on which Nokia says it drew heavily in creating the new ports. However, the move from a community port to an official port was necessary to ensure that applications developed with Qt will be compatible with both future versions of Qt, future versions of Maemo, as well as Symbian and other platforms.