SVP of strategy at Nokia for Qt Sebastian Nystrom has confirmed that Qt will not be used in future Nokia products. Due to a “sharpening of strategy” Nokia has confirmed that it plans to reduce up to 10,000 positions globally by the end of 2013.
Subsequently, Digia announced its plans to acquire the Qt technology, copyright and trademarks, as well as to transfer a number of Qt people from Nokia.
Previously, Qt had reached an agreement with Digia to provide Qt under the terms of a commercial licensing agreement. This version of Qt is called Qt Commercial and is presented from the portal.
“We are looking forward to welcoming the Qt team to Digia. By adding this world class organization to our existing team, we plan to build the next generation leading cross-platform development environment,” said Tommi Laitinen, SVP of international products at Digia. “Now is a good time for everyone to revisit their perception of Qt. Digia’s targeted RD investments will bring back focus on Qt’s desktop and embedded platform support, while widening the support for mobile operating systems.”
“Nokia is proud of the contributions we’ve made to Qt over the past four years. We are pleased that we’ve been able to work with Digia to secure continued development of Qt by the current core team,” said Sebastian Nystrm, head of Nokia Strategy. “Digia’s plans to acquire Qt mean that it can continue as a successful open source project and also offer continuing employment for many people in the community.”
Nystrom confirms that as part of this planned transaction, Digia has also committed to continue the open source Qt Project and meet the obligations of the KDE Free Qt Foundation licensing agreement.
Nystrom goes on to say that his group has modernized Qt for a new generation of user interfaces, grown the Qt community to more than 450,000 developers, and have shipped Qt on close to 200 million devices, including the Nokia 808 PureView.
“Of course, some of us involved with Qt might have mixed emotions about this news. Though Qt will not be a part of future Nokia products, we’re happy that the development of Qt is to continue outside of Nokia and that the transaction would offer career continuity for many Nokia colleagues,” he said.
