Nokia announces intention to acquire Trolltech
It looks like Nokia is getting serious about software development. The company has announced that they’re entering into an agreement to make a public voluntary tender offer to acquire Trolltech - popular developer of the cross-platform Qt development framework. Software developers using Qt can easily write code that compiles on multiple operating systems including Mac, Windows, and Linux. With Trolltech in hand, Nokia can accelerate their own software strategy which includes mobile development, desktop application development, and its Internet services business.
Trolltech allows Nokia and third party developers to develop applications that will work on the Internet from across Nokia’s “device portfolio” as well as on the PC platform.
Are you worried that Qt will disappear from the open source movement? Have no fear.. for now. Nokia plans to continue to license Trolltech technology using both commercial and open source licenses. The company will also continue development of Trolltech’s products and will continue to support new and existing customers.
Let’s think about this deal for a second folks. Nokia is clearly beefing up its software capabilities by purchasing Trolltech but why? When you look back at 2007, there were several important changes to the handset industry. First, Apple entered the field with the Apple iPhone. What’s important about the iPhone you might ask besides a cool user interface and hardware design? The iPhone is a complete software and hardware platform from a single company. Apple controls it all (aside from outsourcing manufacturing of the phone to some Taiwanese companies of course). Apple will also be releasing an SDK for third party developers to write programs for the iPhone which will undoubtedly make the phone even more popular.
Secondly, Google entered into the mobile phone OS and platform development arena with Android. While not quite proven as of yet, Google is a force to be reckon with in the handset world. Even if Google stays with software development, the mere presence of Android means developers will be interested in writing applications on top of Android as well as leveraging Google web services APIs in their applications.
Thus in order to stay on par with the competition, Nokia needs to make sure application developers stay interested in Nokia products. Yet - who will want to write applications that only run on Nokia devices? That’s where the purchase of Trolltech makes business sense. Think about it for a second. A developer writes an application using Trolltech frameworks which are now usable on Nokia products AND across multiple other platforms including Windows and Linux AND the Mac - of course some a recompilation is necessary but that’s relatively minor!
Compare that to developing an application for Android or the iPhone. Write an app for those OS’s and you won’t be able to easily recompile the app for another platform - UNLESS of course, Trolltech’s frameworks also get ported to the iPhone and Android. 
It’ll be interesting to see what fruit this purchase will bear for Nokia over the next year or so.
