Digia has announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire the Qt software technologies and Qt business from Nokia. Digia has sent a letter to the KDE team that it intends to pretty much continue what Trolltech and Nokia built up, so not a whole lot ought to change for KDE – luckily.
I think this is good for Qt. Qt will be Digia’s main business, unlike at Nokia were it was a side business. It will get more attention. Nokia was focused on Mobile, they no longer needed Qt with the WP7 switch. Digia will be more focused on embedded and desktop then Nokia was. Also they can add iOS and android support, which Nokia probably would not do as they were direct competitors.
But this has got me thinking, it is one of the last non-mobile assets of Nokia (afaik). It has now been sold. Nokia is now valued much less after shooting themselves in the foot with the WP7 switch. Does anyone think when Nokia becomes cheap enough, MS will buy them out? Not only will they get a hardware business for Windows Phone, they will also get tons of patents and IP. It could easily be turned in to a weapon to fight android.
Basically everyone believes that. Elop was put in charge of Nokia for a reason, while still being paid by Microsoft.
With Qt and Meego developers leaving Nokia, the only thing to regret about them now is their good hardware design.
My suspicion is MS just wants Nokia’s patents. Like what they did when they destroyed Silicon Graphics. They will acquire the patents at bargain basement prices and then let Nokia slowly die.
Nokia already started to sell its patents.
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Nokia-sells-500-patents-to-Vringo-fo…
$22 million for 500 of its most valuable patents is a joke. There patents where estimated ~10 billion and now they sell them in pieces far under priece. A sign they need fast more cash and others, like Microsoft, are not offering enough.
It’s a sign MS needs proxy trolling campaign ready to roll on the WP8 premiere. Expect lots of lawsuits and articles how Android is such a infringement and “by the way have you checked that new slick WP8 phone yet”? Of course few of these articles would detail most of these suits will concern core communication that Android has nothing to do with.
Microsoft wont be buying Nokia (now) because:
-They already have their man on the top. Whatever little rumors swirl around, Ballmer’s lap dog will go running to his master.
-There is still too much redundancy in the head count in Nokia.
-Headaches with all of the regulatory investigations with EU
When the rumors of a possible buyout from another company become more evident Microsoft can swoop in and take the shambles of the Nokia smartphone division and Elop will (because he is such a nice guy!) sell a bunch of patents to Microsoft.
I do not like the practices of Microsoft (Apple) but I gotta give it to them. They have cornered the market with a very (albeit evil) strategy and are tip toeing in almost every space on the tech industry.
– Nokia has not much of value left that is from interest for Microsoft. Market share? Gone. Software+services? Already transfered. Hardware? Factories closed and hw is done at 3th party in china now. Patents? They are already sold in pieces. Brand? Microsoft has with Windows an own brand and they just established or are establishing Surface.
Nokia as of now is just unactractive. They need to split and sell of all remaining parts separatly.
Wonderful news.
I love Qt mainly for how extensive, easy, well-documented and just pure awesome it is. Hope it sees continued development and improvement for many, many more years.
But aren’t you supposed to hate Qt for brining mostly the same look across different OS, with multiplatform apps?
You’re absolutely right. Qt is only awesome in Qt-based DEs. In Gnome (for example) I want GTK+ apps.
Ahh, but there’s more to that – GTK+ doesn’t fit that well anywhere outside its native *nix desktop environments (perhaps because GTK+ is made largely for one DE).
But with Qt it’s different, it fits quite decently everywhere (perhaps because it’s made mainly for application development), I’d guess many people don’t really realise they’re using a cross-platform app (at least potentially / almost / not too far from a recompile away; and hell, Unity 2D – so a “shell” to very GTK-oriented OS – is made in… Qt)
…except, it of course never fits perfectly (maybe not even in Qt-based DEs – after all, many application UIs are developed with multi-platform in mind) – so you should hate it; and overall, Qt promotes that which you hate
They’ve been selling commercial QT licenses for quite a while now, so it’s only logical they be the ones to acquire the rest of the QT rights. It’s not like their management is anywhere near as incompetent as Nokia’s is so this should be a good move for all parties
You mean “Qt”.
Qt == Qt
QT == QuickTime
Well, if nothing else, I guess it is better to see NOkia selling it to Digia now rather than seeing Qt becoming an MS property through a Nokia buy-out in the (probably not so distant) future…
Vringo and Nokia Execute Patent Purchase Agreement:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/09/vringo-nokia-patent-sale/
http://www.smallcapnetwork.com/The-Question-Nobodys-Asking-About-th…
http://qt-project.org/forums/viewthread/19443/
He killed every possibly alternative to Windows Phone.
Certainly good news in the sense that it’s not a good thing to belong to a corporation that has demonstrated suicidal tendencies.
But it’s not going to be an easy ride for Digia either. The founding company Trolltech eventually gave up, after all. Digia was (I assume) already profitable with their Qt business, but adding 125 engineer salaries to their balance sheet is going to take a toll. Their earnings will have to increase quite a bit as a result of the whole operation. What was nice with Nokia is that Qt was just a minor item in their balance sheet; they could afford to lose money on it. Digia cannot afford that, they have to make money on Qt.
I wish Digia all the best, and will make sure to point to them if somebody requires Qt trqining or support.
It remains to be seen if Digia really will keep all of those 125 engineers on the payroll. Perhaps they mainly wanted control of Qt. And I am sure they did not pay much for it.
I am not sure you can say Trolltech gave up. After all the owners received $150 mn for it. Quite jucy.
Based on their statement, it sounds as if they will continue to pursue Qt as a cross platform mobile toolkit. Sort of like what the Mono company is doing. The desktop versions will continue to be free, but the mobile SDK will not. As much as I don’t like that, its better than Qt disappearing completely. I would ask them to undercut mobile mono, its too much for a single indi developer who releases his apps for free.
Where did you see that the mobile SDK will not be free?
I didn’t. I was just guessing that might be an attractive way to go, because Xarmin (what ever the mono company is called) proved its a viable business model.
I’d guess it will be free as now, and Digia isn’t going to change the status quo and their mode of balancing commercial and free licenses. Making Qt SDK / Qt Creator non free will momentarily cause a community fork, complicating the whole thing. I doubt Digia wants that.
Edited 2012-08-12 02:47 UTC
Which in a way it would guarantee that Digia will be pushed to do their best to continue the success of Qt.
The desktop ecosystem around QT is healthy. This announcement only secures the 3rd party companies investments. The only dark cloud is Windows8 rejection of OpenGL in metro mode which creates a lot of technical difficulties for pushing QT forward for the consumer. The companies that used it for consumer apps will probably pass this time leaving QT for industrial applications only. The mobile side is cast in doubt even more. MeeGo hangs on a thread (Yolla is a young company and Intel was forced to pass it on smartphones, it’s fate on IVI Tizen is unknown) , QT5 needs a lot of work yet and what is worse won’t be available on its biggest installed base to date: Symbian.
RIM fate is unknown as yet. IOS should be easy to port but Apple may still reject it using QML scripting argument as pretext.
Google could be a better match (they probably support native ogl activities), in general I believe QT would be a great native counterpart for java esp. it’s qml api is way easier to get 60fps fluid ui, having a qml java bridge (one that performs) would be a match made in heaven.
Edited 2012-08-12 09:39 UTC
Just a thing: it’s “Jolla”. There they publish their news:
https://twitter.com/jollamobile